Dire Wolves (Just Exactly Perfect Sisters Band)

Been a massive couple of weeks over at RSTB faves Centripetal Force, with new records from Aaron Dooley and Emergency Group last week followed by Joseph Allred and Dire Wolves this week. I’ll work to get ‘em all on the block, but I’m particularly excited to see Dire Wolves back in the same room. The last few years were rough on a cross-continental band, but all the Wolves hit the studio out in Oakland last fall and the result is another ride through the mists with DWLVS pulling us out of the dark. Picking up their usual routine of studio improvisation, the new album nets four new gems, two of which push on or past the fifteen-minute mark. The first side finds the band picking up on a meditative wind. Ajrun Mendiratta’s violin threads through the beginning of “Early Portals Suite,” aloft on the autumn air until it’s caught in the rhythm cradle laid down by Crane and Bosco. The band burrows into the warrens left vacant by Trad, Gras, Düül, & Vuh, once again picking up the pastoral prog mantle as modern heirs apparent.

Dire Wolves’ habit of open-door collaboration pops up once again, and they’re joined by names familiar and new. Taralie Peterson (Spires That in the Sunset Rise) returns to the band and joins Ajrun’s strings in carving the cavities between rhythms, while J.Lee (The Rabbles) adds a cloud of Farfisa to the record. The songs are adorned with the band’s now signature vocal incantations, but this time they swap Georgia Carbone, who’s been at the mic for the last few outings, with Marina Lazzara (also of The Rabbles), layering in a thick dose of dread and desire. It’s apt that the record was both recorded and released in October, as the month seems a fitting backdrop for the band. DWLVS vision of pastoral prog isn’t verdant, but rather desolate, scarred, with wind whipping across fields picked clean. Strange magics mix with cinder and smoke on Easy Portals. The band leaves a few crop circles in the mind, scrawled with the signature of the Just Exactly Perfect Sisters Band.

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