Aquarium Drunkard reviews Flowers In Space
Not too long ago, in a Twitter thread on the various “dad” subgenres of music, someone labeled Khruangbin “dad psych,” and I honestly haven’t stopped thinking about this. Maybe it simply struck too close to home. But the phrase immediately conjured a certain contemporary strain of propulsive, mildly weedy, guitar jams—out enough to get slightly spun in, but not so far gone that you’re alienating people at the cookout or in the carpool lane. This isn’t searing, dark-night-of-the-soul psychedelia. But heads of a certain age know the sense of relief that comes from discovering that your kid’s friend’s parents listen to, say, Rose City Band. They’re probably ok people, all things considered.
Drew Gardner’s already laying the foundations for a dad psych summer. Last month, the mighty Elkhorn, Gardner’s duo with guitarist Jesse Shepherd, dropped the astonishing On the Whole Universe in All Directions. There, Gardner set aside his Fender Telecaster and returned to the percussion and vibraphone duties of his San Francisco out-jazz past. Paired with Shepherd’s grassy 12-string, Gardner’s resonant vibes on Whole Universe made for a set of winding, fractal compositions, climbing the high bricks like wisteria vine. Think of it as a workingman’s Crystal Silence.
Gardner picks up his guitar again for the amiably shaggy Flowers in Space, an album of four low-key liquid jams that all stretch out around the ten-minute mark. Recorded at the same 2019 Black Dirt sessions featured on Gardner’s excellent 2021 self-titled solo cassette, Flowers in Space further demonstrates the guitarist’s virtual telepathy with bassist Andy Cush (of Garcia Peoples) and drummer Ryan Jewell (of pretty much everything). It was an unexpected treat to get another slab of sympathetic magic from what amounts to a veritable dad psych supergroup.
The tracks here are not face-melters. Gardner’s playing is clean and endlessly fluid, while the relentlessly nimble and inventive rhythm section of Cush and Jewell keep the proceedings on the jazzier end of things. The outstanding opener “Sun Dagger” even flirts with an almost Ethio-groove. The slow-burn album standout, “Birds In and Out” hearkens back to the psychedelic simmer of the first two Gunn-Truscinski records. And the rolling country boogie of “Concrete Ship” feels like a drive in the hills. These guys make it all sound easy.
As the weather turns, people are mentally compiling playlists for road trips and barbeques. Gardner, Cush and Jewell have got you covered. And on behalf of a nation of dudes wearing Wooden Shjips t-shirts to little league games, I want to thank them for it.
—Brent Sirota
Raven Sings the Blues reviews Flowers In Space
Drew Gardner’s on a hell of a run over the past couple of years, with two Elkhorn releases finding light, and an archival collaboration with John Tchicai, Marco Eneidi, Roberto De Haven, and Vytas Nagisetty coming out on Astral Spirits earlier in the year. His latest album from Feeding Tube splits the psych and jazz nodes along a slippery axis. Revisiting the trio he’d formed on his eponymous debut for Eiderdown in ’21, Gardner finds himself alongside Garcia Peoples’ Andy Cush on bass and the ubiquitous (at least in these circles) Ryan Jewell on drums. Like the first session, this was recorded by Jason Meagher as part of his Black Dirt (now Drowned Lands) sessions. The record sharpens the impulses that arose on the Eiderdown tape, spreading out into four longform pieces that offer up a hazed vision of exploratory psych and heady, hazed post-Dead jazz.
That Raccoon Records, and Joe Bauer in particular, again come up as a touchstone this year only serves to prove the longevity of that lost classic. While Flowers In Space is nowhere as shaggy as Moonset, it does share its low-slung touch — a quality of feeling like it’s constantly coiling, letting off the tension to almost spring, but never quite fully embracing the entropy. The quality comes through most expertly on “Sun Dagger,” the album opener that finds Gardner’s guitar slipping through the humid clouds of the cosmos with languid ease. Likewise, standout “Birds In And Out” has a slink to it that exemplifies the album’s smoked glass glide. As I’d said, Drew’s been part of some exemplary releases this year, but this one ranks among his best yet.
—Andy French
Record Crates United reviews Flowers In Space
On this, his second solo flight, Drew Gardner leans into more groove-based jams with the help of Ryan Jewell and Garcia Peoples’ Andy Cush.
Pulled from the sessions for his first (stellar) solo album on Eiderdown Records, Flowers in Space wanders down the hazy grey areas that exist between the worlds of jazz, rock and guitar soli music.
If you took the boundless folk rock-fusion of the John Abercrombie Trio, and combined it with the noodly looseness of ’69-’74 Grateful Dead and the moody guitar workouts of the likes of Grant Green and Junior Kimbrough, then you would get the general vibe of this excellent recording.
Tunes like the opening cut, “Sun Dagger,” roll with a propelling conveyer belt-like beat (which is chock full of drum fill asides that are pure Jewell-ian), which allows for Cush and Gardner to freely explore and launch off into a myriad of directions. Often, you’ll find the Elkhorn and Heavy Lidders guitarist snaking around and climbing up these meditative rhythms with the coolness of Bill Frisell, with bluesy licks and pearly, rounded tones. It’s a smoky, calm session and it makes for an equally laidback but demanding listen. If you’re a fan of Gardner’s guitar solos from his previous work, then this is an essential LP for you.
—Keith Hadad
Dusted reviews Flowers in Space
As is often the case for musicians with strong chops and ideas, Drew Gardner is a busy guy. Around NYC, you can catch him playing guitar in free improv settings. He brings blues consciousness and lucid counterpoint to Jeffrey Alexander’s Heavy Lidders. In Elkhorn, his often-augmented duo with 12-string acoustic guitarist Jesse Sheppard, his instruments vary, but Gardner’s usually the guy pushing the music outside of Takoma school parameters.
Flowers In Space presents yet another angle; Drew Gardner, purveyor of hypnotic, late-night vibes. It was done in one spring day in 2019 with Ryan Jewell (Chris Forsyth, Ryley Walker) on drums, Andy Cush (Garcia Peoples) on bass, and Jason Meagher (Black Dirt Studios) behind the board. Parts of that session have already been released by Eiderdown on a self-titled cassette, which concentrates the day’s looser moments. This LP, which has finally escaped vinyl supply chain purgatory, draws sustenance from a diverse set of influences. His resonant tone and rhythmic tension recall mid-1960s Gabor Szabo; his liquid lyricism, Peter Green’s dreamier moments with Fleetwood Mac; and the room he leaves for forward-facing improvisation synthesizes a few vintages of the Grateful Dead.
Cush, as one might expect given the name of his main band, can engage Gardner conversationally, Like Phil Lesh in the Dead. But he and Jewell also lock together to provide crisp, swinging time keeping that sustains momentum and direction. Their exchanges are reflective, keeping the focus on Gardner’s fluent playing, which evidences a welcome compositional consciousness. He has bag full of stinging licks, and he doesn’t mind letting us know about them, but they’re means to articulate and develop tunes, not ends in themselves. The album’s four tracks all last between eight and 12 minutes, but Gardner’s management of tension and release makes it easy to stay the course with him.
—Bill Meyer
Foxy Digitalis reviews Flowers in Space
Silk silhouettes carry snaking guitar explorations through the crisp night air, aloft on slick basslines and simmering grooves. Everything on Flowers In Space simply flows. Stripped down and ready to bounce through patterned, streamlined fields, Gardner leads the trio of himself, Andy Cush (Garcia Peoples), and Ryan Jewell (the one and only) into an oblivion state of mind. Jazz-adjacent inflections find their way into the glossy melodies, pushed along through august atmospheres by Jewell and Cush’s prescient grasp of this music’s inward cascade. Gardner’s playing is so expressive and inviting, pulling us into this transient world to sit and reminisce for a moment before flickering off to another plane. Great stuff.
—Brad Rose
Dusted reviews The Return
Folks following American “don’t call it primitive” guitar music have likely noted Drew Gardner’s redoubtably picking in Elkhorn, where he handles the usually-electric, six-string side of their bases-covered attack. Most folks don’t get to sound so sure in a minute, and it turns out that Gardner is a man with a past. He has been multi-instrumentalist since the 1980s, and during the mid-1990s he was an active participant in San Francisco’s free jazz scene. Around the same time, saxophonist John Tchicai had a teaching gig in Davis CA; he retained Gardner as a drummer, and when Gardner had a chance to record at Guerilla Euphonics in 1995, he returned the favor. Also on board were Church of John Coltrane alto saxophonist Roberto de Haven and, on one track, Marco Eneidi, also on alto. Gardner and bassist Vytas Nagisetty stoke the furnace, alternating a full head of steam with more judiciously applied rumblings, and the twinned reeds give Gardner’s themes a distinctly pre-electric Ornette feel. No doubt there’s a good reason why this music didn’t come out at the time, but it wasn’t on account of the music’s quality.
—Bill Meyer
Aquarium Drunkard reviews Drew Gardner Self-Titled
Further adventures from the Elkhorn crew. First up we’ve got the duo’s electric half, Drew Gardner, striking out on his own with a self-titled cassette on the always-reliable Eiderdown label. Here, Gardner has recruited drummer Ryan Jewell (Mosses, Ryley Walker, Solar Motel Band) and bassist Andy Cush (Garcia Peoples) for a set of laid-back—but occasionally quietly intense—instrumental workouts. It’s a winner from start to finish, exploratory and curious (there are definitely a few “Dark Star”-ish moments) but retaining an earthy, sometimes blues-tinged feel. As in Elkhorn, Gardner is a great player, less interested in flashy solos than in deep interplay. Jewell and Cush give him a sensitive musical setting in which to shine; let’s hope this collab isn’t a one-off.
—Tyler Wilcox
Dusted reviews Drew Gardner Self-Titled
Drew Gardner has been popping up all over lately, on Elkhorn’s snowed in acoustic jam Storm Sessions and the electrified follow-up Sun Cycle and as one of Jeffrey Alexander’s Heavy Lidders. Here, it’s just him and his guitar plus a like-minded rhythm section (that’s Ryan Jewell on drums and Garcia Peoples’ Andy Cush on bass), spinning off dreamy, folk-into-interstellar-journeys like “Calyx” and “Kelp Highway.” Gardner puts some muscle into some of his grooves, running close to Chris Forsyth’s wide-angle electric boogie in “Bird Food.” “The Road to Eastern Garden,” though, is pure limpid transcendence, Buddhist monastery bells jangling as Gardner’s warm, inquiring melodic line intersects with rubbery bends on bass. Give this one a little time to sit, but don’t miss it.
—Jennifer Kelly
Record Crates United reviews Drew Gardner Self-Titled
Drew Gardner is releasing his first solo album today on Eiderdown Records, and it is every bit as strong and essential as anything he had ever released in his duo, Elkhorn.
Recorded at Black Dirt Studios by the enormously talented Jason Meagher, this album of tight improvisations features Gardner on electric guitar, Garcia Peoples’ Andy Cush on bass and Ryan Jewell on drums. Within each song, the power trio sets a specific tone as their guide, and then sprawl out within those parameters, adding all sorts of color and texture to the piece.
The group plays at a drifting, methodic pace, often sounding like what you’d hear in the transition of “Dark Star” into “Space” at a mid-70’s Grateful Dead show, with spectral guitar solos needling through a cloud of celestial percussion. While the jamming is firmly within the realm of rock, outside elements creep into the performances and bend them into fairly unique directions. For example, shades of Middle Eastern music can be felt in the rhythm of “Cloud Gate,” and John Lee Hooker-like blues guitar influences abound in the humid “Bird Food” and “Marie Sharp’s.”
Every track here is a major standout, and the album is best heard in a single sitting (as all good albums should), but if there’s one song that could be the beating heart of the record, it’s the sublime “The Road to The Eastern Garden.” This song slowly unravels itself like the earliest moments of daylight at dawn. Throughout its five-minute runtime, tendrils of smoky guitar curl and stretch out in a mist of quiet shimmering cymbals, while Cush’s bass ventures boldly at the top of the mix. The song goes from meditative and serene to the downright spiritual once Jewell introduces some twinkling bells and chimes. You can practically smell the sacred incense burning by the end of the track.
Spacious, dreamy and nothing short of transcendent, this is one of the finest records to emerge from the world of improvised music in recent memory. Be sure to get your copy from Eiderdown Records today.
—Keith Hadad
Raven Sings the Blues reviews Drew Gardner Self-Titled
Heard a bit from this one when I posted a track a few weeks back, but now the release is out in the wild and its definitely one worth gettin a copy on the speakers. Gardner is one half of RSTB faves Elkhorn and he’s hooked up with a few more familiar faces for his first solo album on Eiderdown. With Andy Cush (Garcia Peoples) and Ryan Jewell (Mosses, Chris Forsyth) backing him as the rhythm section in a pre-Covid recording at Black Dirt, its a formidable lineup all the way down. As is the case when he’s in Elkhorn, Gardner primarily focuses on the electric here, weaving a set of shorn-earth blues and desolate picking that walks through Sun City / Rick Bishop territory on more than one occasion. There’s a fraught tension that runs through the eponymous album, that plunges the players into a twilight psychedelic territory, with Jewell filling out the percussive element with bells and shakers channeling a bit of a Sun Ra, Alice Coltrane aura on “The Road To Eastern Garden.”
While splicing some disparate styles, from the raga, the aforementioned psychedelic jazz, night-possessed blued, and high plains heat shimmer strummers, the assembled players knit the pieces with a deft hand. There’s a soundtrack quality to the release offering moments that feel transformative, jaded, and conflicted. Personally, I’m hoping that this isn’t a one off for this lineup, as this album seems like the vibe between them just getting started. Whether that’s the case or not, Drew’s first under his own name is a high point in an already stellar 2021 from Eiderdown. Recommended going deep on this one with the sun low on the horizon.
—Andy French
Aquarium Drunkard reviews Drew Gardner Self-Titled
Setting his work with Elkhorn aside, Drew Gardner’s solo debut is a spacious, winding gem recalling the deep lysergic jams once housed in the psychedelic ballrooms of yore. Backed by a rhythm section of Garcia People’s Andy Kush and percussion mainstay Ryan Jewel, Gardner’s free to amble wherever he chooses, because there’s no wrong direction to go.