Smile

Boris

Southern Lord

2008-05-05

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Forty years ago Brian Wilson’s only too engulfing Smile project could easily have been his masterpiece, and some say that when it finally arrived it actually was. For Boris however, Smile is just business as usual — veering more towards The Beach Boys standard repetition work after their creative period came to an end in the 1970s. This is not purely a criticism of Boris and just as these Beach Boys records still offered some great tracks Smile is a solid record with some great moments, but despite its beaming title it probably wont be shining out of their discography.

Boris have been productively churning out records with a good turnaround for more than a decade and have not just dipped their toes but swum deeply in various pools of creative avant-rock styles from sludge and doom through punk and garage rock to drone folk, psychedelia and noise. Including the impressive big band work with Sunn O))) Altar most of the band’s greatest albums such as Amplifier Worship and Absolutego embrace several of these styles across their running times — with albums like the sublime Pink and Akuma No Uta switching style almost on a track to track basis, yet impressively keeping threads running it all along together. Smile sticks to this format beginning with a cover of PYG’s “Flower, Sun, Rain” — a long, woozy and melodic psych epic with typical sprawling guitars and dynamics, then bursting into a chugging sludge-Ramones rocker in “BUZZ-IN”. Keeping the tempo up “Laser Beam” is classic rock played at 45rpm, with its lo-fi distorted screeches recalling the excellent work on Pink, as with follow-up “Statement”, though with neither quite achieving the same bite as the 2006 Southern Lord release. 

its dark section of deep wailing sludgy grunge riffs

As their history shows, Boris hold collaborations in high regard and relish opportunities to swap/borrow members of other groups, with Smile being no exception. “My Neighbour Satan” features Michio Kuruhara, most known for his work with Japanese psychedelic specialists Ghost, and is perhaps the album’s most interesting moments. Opening with a light section of fresh guitar notes accompanying melodic and fairly impassioned vocals which sit in front of a muted wall of fuzz and pushed forward by a clicking percussion the track switches into its dark section of deep wailing sludgy grunge riffs and lead reminiscent of the hyper-distortion of the Smashing Pumpkins best heavy efforts. Flitting again between its opposing sections “My Neighbour Satan” is just something a little bit fascinating.

Elsewhere, creeping in over several minutes (although with a strangely abstract and probably unnecessary interjection of noise — seemingly from a completely different track) the untitled melodic doom ballad which the album ends with offers another decent event. Featuring another guester in doom-lord Stephen O’Malley who aids in the build up of deep swathing bass tones, the track builds and progresses but levels at a calmly soothing point, closing the album strongly.