Tuesday Rock City: Wooden Shjips

Wooden Shjips: Dos (Holy Mountain)
Everything is groovy on Wooden Shjips sophomore record, Dos. Everything. From the slap-happy band portraits that adorn the cover to the title itself, which was surely chosen under the warm purple glow of a black light. And the music, defiantly groovy. The five languid psych-rock jams are so steeped in stoner vibes that if you played them at midnight in front of a bathroom mirror, you might conjure an apparition in the likeness of Harry Dean Stanton. "Motorbike" hovers for on a steady krautrock groove with guitarist/vocalist Ripley Johnson doling out bursts of gnarled fuzz guitar. Album closer, "Fallin", which hangs on a two-chord keyboard vamp for more than 11-minutes, has all the cool head-bobbing paranoia of early Suicide. Of course, this was all territory that the San Francisco-based quartet covered on its self-titled debut and true to the title, Dos doesn't deliver a progression of any kind. Rather, it's the sequel. Picking up where the band left off in '07, Dos gives us part-two of the band's unhurried, rambling, sonic journey to who knows where.