Listening through Bon Vivant from PA’s Boozewa is like listening to the combined might of every great fuzzy riff of the ’90’s/early ’00’s from Gruntruck, Melvins, and Soundgarden to noisier compatriots in Unsane and Fudge Tunnel but all delivered under a Kylesa-style production.
“What-!” is a low end lurching nugget of the nascent noise that’s set to unfold over the coming tracks but here, in its’ early stages, fans get just a sampling of all those artists we just mentioned corralled under the Boozewa banner. “Maybe I’m A Bird” is clutch and really gets the party started on this lo-fi romp through a Melvins meets Sonic Youth soundscape and then “Last Splash” is an Indie Dirge with a crunchy hypnotic guitar line from Rylan Caspar that spills out and into “Crown Molding” which showcases some raucous repetitive riffage of it’s own.
“On My Sleeve” goes the Desert Rawk route at its’ inception with the way that Caspar and bassist Jessica Baker’s respective instruments form a wall of synonymous Sludge then settles into a freaky flow propelled by both Mike Cummings’ drumming and voice. “Forward Never Straight” was the one that really made the hairs on the back of our necks stand up and, mind you, we’re nearing the end with this being track numbah six of this 9-track opus so that in itself says a lot of the kind of staying power Bon Vivant has as it unfurls and especially on this instrumental dreamlike state filled with an ethereal electricity.
“IMO” is a gnarly Groove-based heavy in the vein of a lot of the early ’90’s NYC mainstays (Helmet, Prong) with Cummings’ biting words accenting the shreddy sonic surroundings while “Belly Full Of Burnt Dinner”, similar to “Forward…”, is another relentless instrumental mood setter that’s mighty and majestic. Hell, listening through the whole of Bon Vivant is akin to a spiritual experience in itself and then you get to closer “Cali” and it’s like that feeling actualized in song form. That is, if you haven’t already felt the holy spirit entering your safe space.
Bon Vivant is out now through DeepRest Records and you can get yer orderin’ on now by heading here. For more from Boozewa, follow them across the information superhighway by clicking here, here, or here.