Short Reviews [Spurge - 2021 - "Crown"]

One day I received an email from bassist and band leader Jen Hodges asking if I would be interested in hearing the new album from her band Spurge. Given that one of my personal rules is that if I am contacted by an artist directly then I always review the material, I replied in the affirmative, apologized in advance for knowing it was going to take me a long time to get to it and put it on the list. A while later (okay, a long while later) I finally got around to playing it, and during the first song I was sat there asking myself who had sent me this and why had I agreed to it? Jen told me that Spurge is a progressive band and that she had been told about me by Daniel Graham of Great Wide Nothing, but what I was listening to was nothing that I would normally call prog. “NC Flowmaster” opens the album, with some wonderfully delicate bass playing (Jen is a Berklee grad so knows what she is doing), joined with lovely guitar (the rest of the band are Charles on guitar (gigging musician, gear head and technical master.) Marlon on drums (musical family, marching band, gospel, R&B.) Ben on lead guitar (gigging musician, shreddy Krueger.)). But the keyboards and rap vocals which then come in are not what I expect from prog, and I felt hopelessly out of my depth as this is not a style of music I listen to and am massively unqualified to review it. Then the male vocals give way to female, and instead of gentle bass-led accompaniment we now have loads of drums before the music comes back. It does not take much to confuse me, but by now I was wondering what was going on. From here on in the guys provide us with some interesting delicate fusion style on “Neumatic Weiner Tube”, with particularly effective hammered bass, while “57” is far more in your face with rocking guitars and some dissonance. The last 3 tracks are the same in that they are quite different to what has happened before, with the only real continuity being complex and wonderfully played bass. This is not progressive in the sense of being a genre, but more in the sense that the band feel no musical restrictions and instead are going to play whatever they like. However, this does mean that they are appealing only to people who have a similar taste in music as themselves, and while I can appreciate the musicianship and what is being performed, wanting to play it to listen to for pleasure is something else altogether. To my ears the best song is the one at the end of the album, “Traveling”, which is a bass-led instrumental which allows Jen to show off her chops. Available on Bandcamp, this is an album which really does need to be played prior to purchase.