Jeffrey Alexander + The Heavy Lidders – “Spoonful”

Seems almost backwards that the real introduction to Jeffrey Alexander’s Heavy Lidders this year has been the eponymous LP. While it’s an amazing album that bends the band in eclectic directions, devouring Meat Puppets and Dino Jr. touchstones, anyone who experienced the band live prior to that album was familiar with a bit of a different sound hung on the name. When The Lidders played a pre-pandemic RSTB anniversary in 2019 they were into some deep ozone grooves that took solo works from Alexander plus a few standards and drove them through psych-blooze excursions that crawled into the abyss. On their second album of the year Elixor of Life, the band returns to that fecund garden of groove to explore headier waters and hot-tar tangents. They pull back the screen to revel in the Willie Dixon classic “Spoonful,” — ever a source of exploratory jam territory — making it their own with a dive into the murk and mire for a damp take on the tune. The new album is out November 5th from Centripetal Force.

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