Band:	Earth
Album:	Full Upon Her Burning Lips
Style:	Psychedelic rock
Release date:	May 24, 2019
A review by:	RaduP

01. Datura's Crimson Veils
02. Exaltation Of Larks
03. Cats On The Briar
04. The Colour Of Poison
05. Descending Belladonna
06. She Rides An Air Of Malevolence
07. Maidens Catafalque
08. An Unnatural Carousel
09. The Mandrake's Hymn
10. A Wretched Country Of Dusk

"The earth has music for those who listen." Perhaps George Santayana wasn't actually referring to Earth in his quote, but in his defense, he wasn't alive to hear it.

Through their decades of transitioning from drone pioneers to psychedelic to bluesy masters of patience and laid-back tunes, Earth have made quite a name for themselves. And though they're not exactly chameleonic, they've found ways to make every new album feel like a step forward from its predecessors. I'll admit that I don't love Earth as much as I respect them both for their consistent output and for their influence, as they're truly truly deserving of respect, but I haven't found their music to really click with me.

The fact that the album is over an hour long really doesn't help. The fact that it almost teasingly takes its time really doesn't help either. Because it's hard to remember that this isn't just some run-on-the-mill local psychedelic rock band. This is the band who pretty much discovered that you can get away with playing a riff for a really long time as long as it's a very cool riff, which the album is full of. And with the band having hit a sort of expansive peak with Primitive And Deadly, which even had vocals of all things to find on an Earth record. So it feels natural that they could've either tried to outdo that and make something even more ambitious and expansive in palette. Or to go forward you must go back. To touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow. Basically, Full Upon Her Burning Lips has Earth stripped back to its core line-up of Dylan Carlson and Adrienne Davies.

And this can be felt in the music. I mean, of course its felt in the music, where else. I've spoken before about how a lot of music makes more with less, but in a lot of those cases it was due to the music slowly building towards a cathartic moment. There was patience there, but one that promised to be rewarding. Full Upon Her Burning Lips is in no hurry to get anywhere or to change its pace. Best to imagine it as an old man with a straw in his mouth traveling through a desert on his mule at a glacial pace. Glacial does have a bit of a cold feeling because it sounds like "glacier", but make no mistake, this makes you feel like you're under the scorching sun and you have a long way to go. So it's best to just lose yourself in your thoughts and go along with the riffs, as they'll be your companions for a while. Some of them are more psychedelic, some of them more bluesy.

It would be best of you to close your eyes and imagine a silent western movie unfolding before your eyes. You have about an hour to fill it whatever you like, as long as you make sure that not much happens, but there's a lot of scorching sun and a laid-back atmosphere. So that may not work, but indeed it feels to me that Full Upon Her Burning Lips would've worked much better as a soundtrack to something else rather than on its own. Maybe I should stop complaining and just shut my eyes. Oh, hey, there's Clint Eastwood.