SPINDRIFT
LSD AND THE SEARCH FOR GOD
12 Galaxies
Jan. 16, 2008

I like the idea of a good transcendental mind-fuck. My experience with the drug-induced kind is limited, however, to a couple overnight “trips” to the Ocotillo desert when I was in high school. Nothing in my life was so transformative as those warm spring nights exploring cacti like some prescient moon cowboy. I’m pretty straightlaced now – thanks to grad school, rent, and other sobering realities – but sometimes I feel that vestigial self yearning for its origins. And it is often piqued by music.
   
When I saw Spindrift was playing the 12 Galaxies, it nearly triggered a flashback to a moment I never experienced. I knew my life had been missing its psychedelic, spaghetti western soundtrack. I happened also to be curious about what the deity was up  to.. and holy shit!, LSD and Search for God was on the bill. Two birds, one stone - folks.
   
LSD and the Search for God plays straight shoegaze: Spacey, droning guitars, ethereal vocals about tantric sex pilgrimages, etc... There’s something too sincerely romantic about it for my taste; something that irks my postmodern cynicism; something that makes me embarrassed about my adolescent faith in a drug’s ability to transport me beyond the realm of suburban malaise and lame parents.
   
The band sounded good, but chased no chances. With all those three guitars, LSDatSfG managed the structural force of a breath, not the daring, massive wall of sound expected. The tunes were pretty and entrancing and they fulfilled my roommate's shoegaze fantasies – my  roommate who is only satisfied by the lush flavor of Stoli blueberry – but my own prejudice (against the conceptual tenets of the whole genre), and LSD’s affectations and overall mediocrity, impaired my appreciation. Instead of realizing the liminal sensory dimension all that delay and reverb are supposed to conjure, I spent LSD’s set feeling sober as a rock. Not quite on God’s level.   
   
During The Vandelles’ (Brooklyn, NY) set, I went next-door to Doc’s Clock for a few drinks. Drinks were cheaper there and the bathrooms cleaner.  I thought maybe I could stave off, with plain drunkenness, what I felt was an impending disillusionment with revelatory experience (this would ruin Spindrift for me). Maybe a head full of booze would make a nice home for Spindrift’s trippy sound. I had a Jameson and a Newcastle and felt a flame from my warm belly reach up and lick my mind. The bar became too bright, too clean.
   
Back at the 12 Galaxies a small crowd was buying drinks from an enormous bartender. Spindrift were nursing their own in the half-lit corners. Or so I thought. Who were these dark, bearded figures in shit-kicker boots? I needed another drink and got it. My roommate disappeared with her cell phone to her ear. 
   
The next ten minutes were lost. Then Spindrift was on stage looking like the materialized specters of New Mexico, circa 1881. A black and white western film was projected over them and their monstrous shadows inhabited the scenes. Their music was half nightmare, half breathless dream: howling vocals, shimmering guitars, plodding, deeply grooved bass, trembling organ – all awash in reverb. The old theater began to feel as vast as a desert.

[Nathan Ladd]

 
[STREAM] Spindrift: Various Tracks
[STREAM] LSD and the Search for God: Various Tracks