April Birthdays 
Deadlands CD Review by Noel
I’m listening to Deadlands, the self-titled debut 7-song EP by Deadlands, again. Deadlands hail from Chicago, Illinois. Looking for them on facebook proved a minor challenge as there are other bands using that name, so I’ve included the link to their facebook page along with other contact information at the end of this review.
Deadlands are Travis Salisbury on Guitar, Carri Andrews on Bass and Addison Monroe on Drums. At the time Deadlands was recorded they were a four-piece band but since then they have made the transition to a trio and also decided to concentrate on instrumentals. I will therefore focus most on the instrumentals while making a couple comments about the vocals.
The vocals first. Ever hear a band that you’d like for its’ instrumentation, except the vocals are screamed and incomprehensible? Not here. The three songs, ‘Hilljack King,’ ‘Timeless,’ and ‘Old Ghost’ are very good. I like them a lot. I saw Pink Floyd way back they were first touring their Dark Side of the Moon album. The opening act was Looking Glass, of ‘Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl)’ infamy. The audience literally booed them until they left the stage. Deadlands would have made a perfect opening act. These three songs are very reminiscent of how Pink Floyd sounded back then without actually copying them. Travis tells me he gets that a lot, but that he never consciously tried to sound that way. Must be osmosis via all the bands Pink Floyd influenced through the years that became part of the soundtrack to Travis’s musical journey. As Deadlands aren’t intending to record more vocals I’ll conclude by saying I like them but I like their instrumentals a lot more.
The first instrumental I ever heard from Deadlands was ‘Buffalo Trails.’ As I wrote elsewhere, it “had me at the first slow deep heavy reverb tremolo-drenched chord.” I have long chased that sound and feel, and here it is complete and fully realized on a record. There are four instrumental tracks, and they build, each one to the next, in mood, intensity and dramatic impact to an impressive climax.
‘To Kill Ya’ is the first thing you hear on the EP. To say it begins like a great piece of Spaghetti is perhaps misleading because it quickly gets very unexpected and they mix the familiar with a taste of something else altogether, something that reminds me of … nah, can’t be. So I asked Travis for some background about Deadhands and his muse, and what he said really bears witness to this music.
“The primary influence when Deadlands started was spaghetti western movies. We wanted to make music that would bring up images of the hot and lonely desert and what you would experience in that environment. But overtime we brought in our previous influences or whatever we are listening to at the time. For example, you can hear a bit of my shoegaze influence in 'Old Ghost', a little bit of western in 'Hilljack King' that's mainly the slap-back guitar sound and not necessarily the music.
I've always had a piece of my heart in surf music and MOAM were definitely one of the bands that made my ears wake up to surf, but after them, I really started leaning toward more of the melodic surf...The Bambi Molesters, The Penetrators ...etc. I'm really loving all of the Madeira catalog and have been really inspired by those albums lately. Some of our new stuff will definitely have more of a proper surf vibe.
Other than that, the music comes from some folks with a common vision and not wanting to be pinned to a specific genre. We try to mix it up and not get too one dimensional.”
Of course. And Pink Floyd by osmosis or accident or some other medium, mechanism or channel.
‘Out of the Canyon’ starts the same way as ‘To Kill Ya,’ a familiar yet creative new way to present the musical themes of Spaghetti, and then it quickly goes farther out into this other musical dimension than the first instrumental. The music is driven; it vibrates, rumbles and pounds out the melody, dark and ominous. Foreboding. Stirring. Really wonderful, great music, but only a foretaste of what’s to follow. The next two instrumental are back-to-back and form some sort of extended exploration in two movements of how far out surf music can go before it leaves the solar system altogether.
‘Buffalo Trails’ is the third instrumental, again starting in familiar territory. But it surpasses the previous two instros in intensity. Driven by increasingly urgent and harder pounding percussion, it is chased into a place farther from the West than anything heard on the record up to this point. It provokes a kind of star-gazing where this listener just got lost in the melody, powerful chording, and urgent threatening drums.
A word about the bass. It connects all the instrumentals together the same way the drums do. If I play all four instrumentals back to back they form in my mind a single piece of music in four movements, connected together by a recurring theme that gets explored and expanded, not repeated and not repetitious, expanding musically. But always tied together by the growling bass line and drums that set a beat to the music the way a coxswain would in a galley oar ship. Pounding, heavy, consistent, powerful, demanding. Really cool stuff.
Then comes, ‘When Death Rides a Horse.’ (The title name is mis-printed on the cover art.) If the title recalls the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, then it conveys what I heard as it plays. It really is the climax of the EP and ties all the instrumentals together, and I began to think of these four instrumentals, not as separate pieces but as four movements of an instrumental variations on a theme. Every previous musical element is brought into this powerful tune. The chording and melodies played on guitar previously reappear and work their way through the piece. The bass and drums beat out the most dire and fearful measures as they increase urgency throughout. Somehow they even found a place for something Dick Dale does, using the guitar to imitate an animal’s screaming wail. All in all, it’s quite a performance. And again, playing the four instrumentals back to back reinforces the feeling they are the movements of a single composition, exploring the theme through many variations.
There’ve been a number of debut EPs in the nearly two years I’ve been listening to modern surf music that created a lasting impression on me, and which still sound so unique that I can pick one of their tunes out instantly on the first chord. The self-titled Monterreys, Dawn of the Deadbeats by The Deadbeats. Sometimes They Come Back by Kill, Baby…Kill! are but three examples. Other bands have a body of work that I can identify as soon as I hear it, like Daikaiju, The Madeira, The Tomorrowmen and Dick Dale or The Rebel Surfers. These and others artists don’t sound much like anyone but themselves. Deadhands is like that. They are not another MOAM-style or anyone else’s style band.
I am eager to hear what they do next.
Deadlands are on SG101 as deadlands
Deadlands are on facebook as Deadlands http://www.facebook.com/deadlandsband
Deadlands band info on https://www.facebook.com/#!/deadlandsband/info
Travis Salisbury is on facebook as Travis Salisbury https://www.facebook.com/#!/tsalisbury?fref=ts
—This is Noel. Reverb's at maximum an' I'm givin' 'er all she's got.
