Clipd Beaks - To Realize (2010) [Love Pump] // Grade: B

Oakland’s Clipd Beaks are a great band. Let’s just say that up front; they were a great band in 2007 with the slush-noise Hoarse Lords, and they’re an even greater band now that they’ve settled cozy-like into a cave of drone and pseudo-psych. Love HEALTH but need a little more nuance? Wish Bear In Heaven were less polished, structured? To Realize is your jam.

And I’d love the album—I mean, straight-up hysterical love—if it were 2 EPs. Divide it after the wailing climax of “Home” and let the separate halves speak for themselves: its initial ominous jitter cracked away from the eventual wide-open space. Not to imply that the album ever goes downhill. It’s just that once you hit that explosive midpoint, stuffed totally with so much buzz and drone, each song starts to feel like the final cheese course at some fancy restaurant; delicious for sure, you’re just so effing full.

But you can’t really nibble away at either half of To Realize. Though its first part is arguably more propulsive, maybe even the better half if you need to make a distinction (there’s no denying a track like “Visions” and its pterodactyl-squeal guitars), it’s the closing songs that really demand an empty stomach. How perfect that among them is a track called “Desert Highway Music”—the whole thing really does feel like 75 mph through isolated sand. Vocals echoing like a ghost, molded to the scenery. Hollow snake-rattles in the distance. Early tracks “Strangler” and “Broke Life” may hit you instantly with the deadly thump of bass and whatever else, but the second half comes in like a dust storm—the musical equivalent of peyote.

Which, to be fair, describes the whole album; every rattle and hum creates a thick, textured atmosphere that feels like a hallucination…or, at least, a few completely sleepless nights. And though the rhythmic noise is impactful no matter what, the buzz hits even harder in 2 chunks. Go the full hour at once and you might lose the effect to some bummer comedown—and who wants that, right?