Live Review: Wooden Shjips

Thankfully the Wooden Shjips show isn't nearly as crowded as the Steve Earle performances at the same venue later in the week, but the room is still pretty rammed post-support slots from the excellent Forces and psych wonder women Beaches.

Wooden Shjips lock straight into the groove of latest album West's opening number Black Smoke Rise and we're transported. There's flashing geometric shapes in black and white on three screens and the be-flannelled audience (we count around ten within arm's reach) settle into the wash of noise. The sound quality is remarkably good, bordering on flawless, though in spots there's a weird pulsing effect causing the sound to shift in waves ranging from loud to really fucking loud.

On their last visit, Wooden Shjips scored a pretty unanimous Golden Plains boot during a memorable sun-drenched afternoon set. It was always going to be impossible to top, but the San Franciscan four-piece give it a fair crack. They occupy the stage in a three-to-one formation with guitarist Erik 'Ripley' Johnson rockin' off on his own stage right. Their tunes meld through expanding psychotropic ruts and flows; at times reminiscent of the psychier moments of New Zealand's The Clean or The Bats, but at others bordering on mantric meditative chants. It's an immersive sensory experience and to avoid getting lost in the wash the band kindly provide signposts in the form of brief pauses between numbers and revisiting familiar hooks after extended periods of instrumental freak-outs.

Bassist Dusty Jermier is the glue that holds this thing together. Through the continual wigging and noodling of Johnson's free-form guitar stylings, the bass remains tightly wedged into a dirty ditch of a groove. Intensity builds as the band traverse much of the West material before they begin delving into the older songs. But it's here, later in the set, that they really hit form and the final quarter of the body performance renders the room a forest of gently swaying, closed-eyed space cadets drifting in a haze of guitar-induced bliss. Chirping birdsong twitters over a silenced audience to announce the arrival of the grinding pulse of behemoth Death's Not Your Friend, from the career-defining collection of rare singles Wooden Shjips Vol II, and the introspective swaying intensifies somewhat. Main-set closer is one for the trainspotters – the too-Wooden-Shjips-to-be-Wooden-Shjips song Buddy, originally penned by New Zealand one-hit-wonders Snapper.

The encore is a one-song affair but it's the one song conspicuously lacking thus far, the Wooden Shjips Vol II-opening Loose Lips, and it catches our eyeballs on fire, rounding out a set worthy of banking right alongside their Golden Plains appearance as one of the best psychedelic music experiences of the last five years. As much about 'songs' as it is about 'shapes' or 'strata' of sound, the Wooden Shjips live performance exists very much in at least three dimensions. If you close your eyes and let the music consume you, you can come out the other end all the richer for it.