Album Review: Richard Vain – Night Jammer

The first few Richard Vain shows were solo jammers, but the seeds of a grungier, darker, dancier sound than his last project, Bare Mutants, were sown. Jered Gummere teamed up with Carbomb from Ponys and Lugs from Storm Clouds and Richard Vain was fully realized. Their debut album, Night Jammers, was born in the basement, mastered by Jim Diamond and was released via Big Neck Records on vinyl, CD and digital formats at the start of December.

The fuzzed out introduction to Tremors slowly builds into a driven riff that lulls you into a psychedelic trance, you only snap out of this as the track ends in a squall of feedback and breaks out into Ratz, a short heady track that possess waves of fuzz that come to an all to abrupt end. The desolate feeling Behind The Eyes brings a shift in the feel of Night Jammer with a relentless riff that ebbs and flows in intensity, before it slips into the distorted vintage indie of Castles, something that they later revisit with Punks Inbred. Richard Vain continue to explore the underbelly of dark psychedelia, garage influences come to the forefront with One Two Far and The Tar Pits before the primeval psychedelia of Encounter and the album’s closing track, Recluse, ease you back into the psychedelic trance that brought into you the world of Richard Vain.

Night Jammer recalls hazy psychedelia crossed with Jonathan Richman And The Modern Lovers along with a healthy dose of the early recordings by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and The Jesus And Mary Chain thrown in for good measure. Night Jammer is a heady intoxicating claustrophobic slab of psych and garage influences that for the most part washes over you in a hazy waves, but it also occasionally jolts you out of your head space with shorter sharper bursts of garage punk and feedback laced indie, it’s this that stops Night Jammer descending into a self indulgent exercise and keeps you guessing. If your tastes lie towards the more experimental and unpredictable side of the alternative scene then Night Jammer could be the perfect soundtrack to your hazy evenings.

Night Jammer can be streamed and purchased via Bandcamp here