Audiovent: Dirty Sexy Knights in Paris
unfairly compared to their more-successful
siblings. Eschewing the experimental pop
rock of Incubus, Audiovent was all about
vintage sounds, going for old-school
psychedelia with a modern rock sensibility.
The band also had a more masculine edge,
foregoing Incubus’s tender romantic side.
Its major label debut, Dirty Sexy Knights
in Paris, was a polished re-recording of its
self-released Papa’s Dojo that started off
strong but failed to gain traction, and the
band would break up during their attempts
to record a follow-up, saying even the most
basic creative decisions were like “pulling
teeth.” Still, the band’s sole album showed a
production savvy that had a lot of promise—
it’s a shame the band got swallowed by the
industry and its own inability to compromise.
Considering how many albums both have
released and the different artists they’ve
collaborated with, why did it take so long
for Phish’s Trey Anastasio and Primus’s Les
Claypool to play together? You throw Police
drummer Stewart Copeland on top of it,
you have a jam band dream team. The three
of them complement each other perfectly,
their unique deft play styles creating a sound
that’s very loose and playful while still being
exciting and epic. The pendulum swings
constantly between Anastasio’s quirky
surrealism (“Radon Balloon”) and Claypool’s
sardonic humanism (“Shadow of a Man”)
but there’s never a point where the band
doesn’t sound united or cohesive. Sadly, the
trio’s various commitments would relegate
Oysterhead to simply a one-off (minus the
odd jam session), but thankfully we were able
to get three geniuses like this in the same
room at all.
STANDOUT TRACKS: “Little Faces”, “Mr.
Oysterhead”, “The Army’s On Ecstacy”
STANDOUT TRACKS: “The Energy”,
“Gravity, Stalker”
OYSTERHEAD
The Grand Pecking Order (2001)
Oysterhead: Grand Pecking Order
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