Träd, Gräs Och Stenar

Last year wrought a long needed box set from Swedish godfathers of improv-rock Träd, Gräs Och Stenar. As luck would have it, this year follows that document up with a new album forged by original members and some newer touring members and it brings the band’s sound tumbling into the 21st Century. The album’s impetus was the passing of original members, Torbjörn Abelli and Thomas Mera Gartz, both of whom passed away very close to one another. The remaining members met for sessions that exorcised grief, celebrated life and found passage through to another level of psychedelic experimentation.

The set isn’t nearly as frayed as their earlier works, rather it sounds like it could be splitting hairs between the dark tension of some of the Constellation catalog, the midnight guitar improvisations of Loren Connors and the toasted tones of High Rise. The resulting album is raw, barren, drone-blues at its finest. Haunted and flayed bare of any pretense, this is a sonic sky burial. The band have already earned their place in the pantheon of psychedelic heroes, but they just drive that stake further into the ground with this collection. If there’s a moment in your life that needs to be exorcised and burned to the bone, then Tack For Kaffet (So Long) has a solution somewhere in its tracklist.