Book of Shadows

Book of Shadows

Having left venerable space rock outfit ST 37 in 2001, keyboardist Carlton Crutcher now turns his third eye toward connecting otherworldly noise to pagan and Wiccan lyrical themes. While Book of Shadows experiments in the same psychedelic hemisphere as ST 37, it's a mellowed-out tangent focused on slow, comforting vibrations as opposed to manic tweaks and valleys. Crutcher's vocalist wife Sharon alternates between the gentle, spoken word chants of "Bring Ginger Candy" and the shifted drone of "Krisna." Aaron Bennack's clean, chorus-saturated guitar drives many of the songs, providing an early Seventies British folk counterweight to Crutcher's aural canvas of spiraling bleeps and faraway howls. The literal centerpiece of Hanged Man is "Women Is the Altar," an 11-minute ceremony that's sure to blow minds and ruin church potlucks. More harrowing is "Ring Pass Not," an instrumental conveying its titular concept of not being able to transcend the delusions that keep one from attaining a higher level of consciousness. The invocation-style "Samhain" is the only song here with a truly "dark" mood, and that's mainly because of the closing guitar disintegration. Regardless of whether you're able to follow the veiled spiritual themes underlying the music, the quartet's slow-motion sound is perfect for a quiet night of contemplative decompression.