Clutch Jam Room

There is a sense when listening to Clutch that you are privy to some transmission from a world not exactly our own. Consider that, during "Release the Kracken," we are treated to a lecture on Greek legend, an undulating monologue floating atop a tumbling sea of boogie. Cowbells clack in rhythm while an organ catcalls an alien melody, and the story of Perseus and the Gorgon rolls triplingly from the tongue of our narrator, the unmistakable Neil Fallon. The song fades, the orator subsides, coughs, barks "What", then resumes with a half-scat in which we percieve the repetition of the word "smokestack" over a rapping of drums and the squall of proto-jazz guitar soloing. To those unfamiliar with the band -- to those who aren't really paying attention -- Clutch is the noise of a faceless bar band plunking away in some caliginous corner of a dive bar nestled into the corners of the great American wastelands. Listen closer, and details reveal themselves from under low-slung fedoras, war-masks and eyepatches, unshrouding themselves from myth. The songs veer dizzyingly from the smoke-clogged answering machine message rapped out on "Bertha's Big Back Yard" to the the rollicking country of "Gnome Enthusiast;" the rampant psychedelia of Black Sabbath's "Masters of Reality" shambling down roads little more than dust in America's uncharted inner frontier. More than any of their other missives prior to this, "Jam Room" exemplifies Clutch's vector into uncharted terrain, both musically and lyrically; it is this road that would take them completely out of the gravity of the known on the recently issued "Blast Tyrant." Though they don't always hit the mark, that Fallon and company take the risks they do is far more commendable than the endless repetition of so many other bands. The failures here are precious few and fascinating nonetheless. Here, then, is the missing link between the Clutch of yore, whose fascinations were manifold and multifarious but always otherworldly, to the Clutch of today, who shuffle off their fascinations to become them.