Wo Fat – Psychedelonaut
I’ve had this album for a while now, if you’re a regular reader you may have spotted it listed in the ‘what’s on the stereo’ section on the intro page. Wo Fat’s Psychedelonaut is, in case you hadn’t realised, a favourite of mine. So why has it taken me this long to get round to telling you about it? Wo Fat did, after all, release this album quite a while ago. To be honest, I’m not too sure, but the important thing is I’m telling you about it now!
When I was in the US I seem to recall being told that “everything is bigger in Texas.” Everything Sate-side already seemed pretty massive to me; the cars, the food (I spent two days in LA nursing a ‘large’ root beer that I could have drowned a puppy in), the boob jobs, in fact everything seemed bizarrely oversized as it was. Being the wide-eyed and innocent lad from East Anglia that I am I spent most of my time feeling like I was in an episode of Land of the Giants (well, not quite, but you get my point). “So,” I thought to myself, “just how big is ‘big’ in Texas?” If the songs these Texas fellas are peddling are anything to go by then I think the answer is “pretty fucking big!”
Wo Fat aren’t trying to re-invent the wheel with this album, tracks like Analog Man and Enter the Riffian allude to as much. This is an album that is about big, fat hard rock tunes being played at obnoxious volume. The band name check, among others, Black Sabbath and ZZ Top as influences and I can see why. Every band in the stoner scene owes a debt to Sabbath, there’s no way anyone can deny that, it’s a scene built on Sabbath worship, and Wo Fat really are no different in that sense. There is, however, a southern swagger that runs all the way through Psychedelonaut that can be likened to early ZZ Top.
If you’re a fan of Scissorfight then it’s safe to say that you’re probably going to be a fan of Wo Fat. As I said there is nothing ground breaking here but that isn’t the point, Psychedelonaut is about riffs, it’s about making a fucking racket, it’s just good heavy rock and roll. This is how Wo Fat describe themselves . . .
“Wo Fat believes in the Riff. Wo Fat’s music is all about the riff. Wo Fat are well schooled in the way of Rock. They have learned from the recorded evidence left behind by the old ones of the ’70′s . . . They have gone further back to glean the foundations of Rock from the bluesmasters of days past . . . They have travelled through the backwoods mythos of the north Mississippi hill country blues of R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough and studied the riffage of more contemporary masters . . . They also possess knowledge of the archaic arts of analog recording and vacuum tube amplification. The result is a bubbling psychedelic brew of heavy riff- rock and electric fuzzed-out blues.”
‘nuff said.
Just go check them out.
by enos
