Waggers Over The Station - Upekkha

Waggers Over The Station
Upekkha
(2010, self released)
RIYL = The Microphones’ Mt. Eerie, Paavoharju, Chris Rehm, Green Gerry

The factual soundness concerning information about Waggers Over The Station being indeed the sole individual, Casey Shew (that impervious wreck), is an illusion. Many invisibles contributed here, and that Mr. Shew would even consider shutting out their mouths and fingers from the paint-black thread lining every crease in this album is, in and of itself, a travesty. Credit to hooded malefactors brimming with alcohol, tied to the tracks and humming their death hum; credit to light fissures that bursted maniacal into the seams of Shew’s pockets and socks; credit to the wind (what Casey, do you own the wind?!); credit wooden cogs pumping water, sloshing and creaking properly under balloons of liquid weight; credit to the heartless metal gods tricked into patient vibration – and that’s just for opening track. Truth be truth, Upekkha carries forward, barreling, like a catatonic train – its metallic chugga chugga as it trollies down the track –shifting and contorting, dog-faced ambivalent, a tigerbelly carriage roaring all the way until the slowed point of the next stop; stops that flutter, and fritz gorgeously, bursting out in equal parts Isaac Brock and Phil Elverum (at least on “I Stand on the Hilltop. Light Falling on the Grass”). Upekkha devours all, carnivorously chompcrunching the bones of its forbearers (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Animal Collective, Natural Snow Buildings, etc.) and bleeding the remains out into this wholly new construction, fully organic, completely mechanized, rooted and branched, the whole atmosphere, deep deep deep, thick, immersive and soul-sucking. The whole of the world will crumble around you in imaginative verve, soil and leaf, sunk to the pit. And you, Mr. Shew, seek to take the recognition, to aggrandize yourself as thee wagger, to loom heavy over the station all by your lonesome. Your ribs can’t shadow it. Your thin fingers couldn’t grip it if they tried. Upekkha is bigger than you…bigger than all of us. But not so big, perhaps, even as it disassembles matter around us, that the songs seeping through won't tug righteous at the tiniest heart strings left wafting. (Thanks Casey.)

-Thistle

PS - album of the year contender

Place. The Light Falling on the Cabin by Waggers
I Stand on the Hilltop. The Light Falling on the Grass by Waggers