Dive, listener, knowing that your next hour will be filled with diversions aplenty: a wheeling circuit of sci-fi sea-shanties and cavalier ballads, narrated from parts unknown; a family of polysemic song-sets; a paranomasaic Liederkreis of harmonic sympathies and knotted hierarchies; a fanfare of brazen puns and martial lullabies, blazing in sorrow and horseplay and love, in turns symphonic …
At this point, Gastr del Sol was pretty much just David Grubbs and Jim O’Rourke, though John McEntire was still around here and there on a couple of songs. There are a few other guests at points — percussion from Steve Butters and clarinet from Gene Coleman, both on the lengthy, mysterious “Work From Smoke” — but otherwise …
After the somewhat disappointing Acre Thrills, U.S. Maple got a new drummer and, as Purple on Time reveals, a new sound. Coherence isn’t necessarily the first word that comes to mind when describing albums like Talker and Long Hair in Three Stages, but it does apply to this collection of songs, particularly the album opener, “My Lil’ Shocker.” …