New album: JPW & Dad Weed || Amassed Like a Rat King
Desert dreams and cosmic connections
Here we find folky psych pop that meets melancholic alt-rock, in a timeless kaleidoscope of sound and sentiment—solid but surprising.
The Two Against Nurture EP was a promising taster of the collaboration between JPW aka Jason P. Woodbury and Dad Weed aka Zachary Toporek, their first joint full-length Amassed Like a Rat King—the title track is an ode to Woodbury’s rural Arizona upbringing—lives up to expectations. The eleven songs emerged from friendship and mutual admiration, a shared ‘third mind’ situation and studio alchemy led to a captivating audio document of memory and motion. “You could call it God // I think I’d rather not (it’s happening)” we hear in the telling single It’s Happening, set to animations from IBM’s 1958 The Information Machine film. Probably it is the synergy of shared inspiration, creative minds and a cosmic connection?
“What you’re calling out // Makes me feel something” are the final lines of the elastic closing track What If I Were Dying, and that’s just the way it is.
Amassed Like a Rat King is out now digitally and on vinyl LP through Fort Lowell Records.
