The desertry landscape makes you feel you’re walking right into a trap the moment ‘A Distant Figure in the Fog’ begins. Almost very Lynchian like, it walks right into a bizarre dream that’s unfolding in front of the silver screen, paying nod to elements of Eraserhead, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, and Lost Highway. And that’s what Tumbleweed Dealer are doing, taking you on this alternate film journey with their latest follow-up, Dark Green.
It’s been eight years since Montreal’s own post-stoner progressive rock band had unleashed an album after 2016’s Tokes, Hatred & Caffeine. It had been a long time since this band had carried the elements of prog, psych, and doom into their blood, sweat, and tears. With Dark Green, it’s a welcoming return for a band that’s carrying on that legacy with massive amounts of hellfire pouring into the compositions that are worth exploring.
For Seb Panichaud, Angelo Fata, and Jean-Baptiste Joubaud, they are learning to keep the spirits growing brighter and brighter every time this album gets played, repeatedly. And to be allowed to have guest musicians such as Guillaume Audette (keyboards), Jocelyn Couture (trumpet & flugel horn), Loic Roy-Turegon (trombone), Zach Strouse (saxophone), Ceschi Ramos who channels Mike Patton’s intensive vocal lines from his Mr. Bungle years which is evidential behind ‘Ghosts Dressed in Weeds’, followed by the mad scientist of keyboards from Antoine Baril, they knew that they weren’t on this album to lend support, but to give Dark Green that mighty push which is needed.
‘Dragged Across The Wetlands’ becomes this fast-paced roller-coaster ride in which Panichaud unleashes his anger throughout his guitar and bass, walking into this cat-and-mouse chase as Fata comes into the picture, knowing he has Seb’s back with some hefty craftsmanship. Once Couture goes into the climax between his trumpet and flugel horn, that’s some crazy-ass shit that flows in well.
‘Sparks Adrift in the Louisiana Nightsky’ goes deep into the swamp with some heavy Crimson motif and intense time changes in which the band walk into. Returning back to the cat-and-mouse chase, there’s some nice nods towards Steve Hackett’s ‘A Tower Struck Down’ that comes to mind in which the Tumbleweed’s tip their hats to, proving Hackett was more than just a member of Genesis.
Once it segues into ‘A Plant That Thinks It’s Human’ you begin to see that the Dealer’s have been watching some of the classic sci-fi, b-movies, and scores that John Carpenter did during his heyday. They know their source material very well. At first you think it’s a return to the cat-and-mouse chase in which you see in those Tom & Jerry shorts, but it gets even crazier and more surreal by stepping into a Salvador Dali painting or an Alejandro Jordowosky film between Santa Sangre, El Topo, or The Holy Mountain.
But it’s more the prog genre that they’re known for, there’s the krautrock and post-punk / new wave influences that flow into view. From Depeche Mode, John Foxx’s Metamatic-era, Brian Eno, Suicide, Cluster, to Kraftwerk’s Trans Europe Express thrown into the mix, you’ve got yourself a heavy weekend with the Tumbleweed’s. But its Baril and Audette that blend in the mighty forces of Sludge by bringing it all home on ‘A Soul Made of Sludge’.
The rhythm section walks into this droning hallucinated world that gives the keyboardist a chance to walk into this trippy effect that almost speaks of a organ-driven attack of Ash Ra Tempel’s first album, Painchaud’s nod to Bootsy Collins and his spider-crawling fret walk on his guitar, and Fata bringing it all home with drum work to fade off into the night.
Dark Green is, as I’ve mentioned, a welcoming return to the Dealer’s home planet. The future seems certain to see what the trio will do next. Their continuous sound has been putting listeners into a trance, not knowing what will happen in the weeks, months, and years to come. It might be the album’s answer to the Midnight Movies of the late ‘60s and 1970s where it still continues to thrive, and we got something special with this bad boy.
