It’s ironic and weirdly coincidental that I’m reviewing a psych-rock hodgepodge band during the week that I went to the record store and dumped a wheelbarrow of cash on records from the likes of The Wizards From Kansas, The Silver Apples and Head Machine. This is a realm of music still unfolding itself to my palate. Usually when I find something new, I dive, headfirst, into the deep end and scoop up all the treasure I can. This usually means that I end up with a bunch of music that is extraneous within about two months. Do you know how many hip-hop records I’ve left in my wake?

Well, the perfect consequence of reviewing I \ D's Midnight Hot is that its shortcomings can tame the consuming beast within me. Its messy wandering improvisations will save me nights whoring on Aurora to make rent after I spent all my dough on records.

I \ D are certainly steeped in the psych-rock, improv-rock, jazz-funk sound, but they splatter it all across the wall like a first-year art major’s reinterpretation of Jackson Pollack. It lands with little or no meaning; there’s seemingly nothing to absorb but a bunch of noise. “Assimilate and Spit Fire, Destroy!” starts with about a minute and a half of spinning backwards on a merry-go-round. After you get off that, dizzy and walking like a drunk on Halloween (drunkest holiday of the year in the US), the drums speed you along a grimy sidewalk. Strangers’ off-tune glares reflect harmlessly off the background of your drunken gaze. The tonal quality of the guitar reminds me of late-80s crime drama soundtracks. You know that real tinny tone that is played like it’s supposed to have balls, but ends up all virtuoso and no real blues? That’s what I’m talkin’ ‘bout. Then, the groove forms like Voltron and emulates the dead sound of new wave that gave spawn to such giants as Talking Heads. This, too, comes to be chewed slowly within the mandible of psych-rock undertones sans the real trippiness.

And just when I think I might need to quit after struggling through just the first track, the groove transition from “Assimilate…” to “Hot Boy” keeps me hangin’ on. The tight, galloping high-hat surfaces again and again, strong-arming the energy to stay head-above-water when the harmonics struggle yet again.

I feel that the biggest hill for these guys to climb is to learn how to write songs (not that this is always how it "should be done," but for their skillset actual songs would greatly benefit them). I, personally, don’t want to hear  two-minute-plus lead-ins of noodling, stumbling and meandering before you show me what you can/could do. Basically, trim the fat and don’t listen to the playback of “Show Us Your Prowess, Lady” and dream that it is anything like an eleven-minute wanderer produced by the likes of Godspeed or A Silver Mt. Zion. I'm sorry to say those bands are the exception to the rule.

-Gabriel Bogart