Terry Gross

The second album from SF power trio Terry Gross, cheekily titled Huge Improvement, ducks the snark that the title implies by twisting the turbine of their debut enough to warrant the self-applied praise. The band, featuring Trans Am’s Phil Manley alongside drummer Phil Becker and bassist Donny Newenhouse, turn studio-born, tape-injesting jams into the kind of progressive epics that snare them between the barbed pikes of Endless Boogie and Mammatus. The band wraps their prog n’ propulsion in a space rock veil, chugging through hypnotic phrases until they crack the casing on the stratosphere. The Gross turn towards the skies, reveling in the trappings that glue space prophets and riff rockers together, offering up 7-12min fryers over the altar of woofers and wires. Throughout the four tracks unfurled here, the band huffs enough ether and ozone to set a side or two ablaze, but what sets ‘em apart from the average Bandcamp burners stuck in the Hawkwind hoosegow is that they never take themselves too seriously.

Aesthetically built to bring Creedence to memes that espouse, “if the guitarist looks like this, you’re gonna die in that pit,” and bursting with a bench full of ringers, the band could easily slip into self-mythology and overwrought murk. Instead they have fun with Space Rock tropes, stringing narratives around interstellar commerce and stalled starships through riffs ripe enough to peel a layer of paint. The first three cuts bring the darkness, cutting through the cold expanse of space and reflecting back the industrial curves of the craft. The set the controls for the color-coded sun by the time they hit the exit hatch, though, capping off the record with the almost pop-loaded “Effective Control.” I’m all for bands that turn chops into turbulence and have reverence for Marshal-stacked scorch, but its nice to hear a band able to do that and have fun out there too.

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