Album Review: Slough Feg - New Organon

I'll get this out of the way early; I've always thought Slough Feg is a radically overrated band. I like them, but the underground of people who claim them to be one of the best bands going are out of their minds. They're a solid band, and they've made a couple of decent records, but they also write tons of filler tracks that are empty skeletons around a guitar harmony. If not for their penchant for taking licks from Thin Lizzy, and the very unique vocals, Slough Feg would have faded into obscurity long ago. Oh, that and their name.

But after taking considerable time off, Slough Feg tells us they have only returned becaue they have a collection of songs good enough that they had to be released. This isn't an album put out to go through the motions of the release cycle, but the very best material Slough Feg has come up with in the years since we last heard from them. Now that they have set the bar so high, don't blame me if they fail to clear it.

We immediately get classic Slough Feg on the opening "Headhunter". The intertwined guitars mix doom with the folk flair, and Scalzi's gravelly voice is exactly what we remember. It takes two verse cycles before we get to the crux of the song, which is a Celtic/folk melody that's precisely the kind of thing that makes the good parts of Slough Feg good. It's hampered by a production that puts the vocals far enough back in the mix they're difficult to make out, which is a shame. Also a shame is that the best part of the song is only played in the foreground once, while nearly two minutes are handed over to meandering guitar solos. In the classic Slough Feg tradition, the band can't help but handcuff their own songs.

In the second tracks, "Discourse On Equality", there's a reprehensible stretch of time where the guitar 'solo' is made up of squealing and feedback that is entirely unmusical, and painfully unpleasant. There is simply no excuse for putting pure noise into a song, other than being a dick.

Songs like "The Apology" are much better. That still doesn't hit the best marks that most of "Down Among The Deadmen" did, or songs like "Free Market Barbarian", but it has some nice playing, and a solid hook. It's quirky while still being digestible.

As is often the case with Slough Feg, I get the feeling from many of these songs that they aren't songs as much as they are excuses to play a lot of guitar. They do that, and if you're someone who thinks riffs and solos are all that matters, then you're probably going to like this record a lot more than I did. I certainly don't hate it, and I see the charm in a few places, but by and large I don't hear fully fleshed-out compositions that have instrumental and vocal parts that have strong appeal. A lot of the vocals and vocal lines here come across like afterthoughts, which as mentioned before, could be in part from the vocals being too far back in the mix. That single choice turns everything into a wash of sound that does the band no favors.

Ultimately, Slough Feg is who they are. They're a solid little band that puts out wildly inconsistent records that have a certain appeal. That's not nearly enough for me to say this record is worth your time. The writing is rough, the production is rough (it's more than the low vocals), and frankly, they've put out several records much better than this one. They set the bar high, so all I'm doing it not bending down to save them. This one fails on its own accord.