Is there Water on Mars?
It's out there.
Much like Alani Bankhead, or Tim Sheehy’s inclination to break someone’s arm, Water on Mars seemingly appeared out of thin air.
Back in the faraway world of 2016, the Missoula quartet recorded a set of stellar psychedelic jazz-stoner-electronic compositions; seven sprawling, strange, murky tracks. A decade went by. Then, without any fanfare or explanation, they released the album on Bandcamp last week, exactly ten years after they recorded it.
Water on Mars is at turns playful and confounding. On “Pigeon Jacket,” for instance, Kyle Gillett sets the stage with a melodic, lumbering bass line before Jarom Hein’s space-age synths and Cole Bass’ saxophone careen into view and transform the song into a Technicolor, glittering wonderland. “Juice Box,” on the other hand, is arguably the album’s most straightforward track, built around a catchy synth and sax call-and-response.
“Cosmo” brings to mind one of my favorite records of the past few years, Sam Wilkes and Sam Gendel’s Music for Saxofone and Bass Guitar; it similarly conjures rainy-day melancholy out of blurry, elusive melodies. Yet “Cosmo” boasts the added distinction of Jordan Weigart’s snappy, clattering drums, which stake out a sharp contrast to Gillett’s muddy bass lines, more opaque than the waters currently sloshing around in Many Glacier Valley.
The mystery surrounding the record’s belated release only adds to its allure. While I wish the group was still together, playing these wild songs on stages around town, I also love this project just as it is: an artifact of another time, dropped at our feet as a fully unexpected and wonderful surprise.
In other news…
I put together a roundup of spectacular new music from across Montana for the lovely folks at The Pulp. You can read it here!