Thank God For Science – Volume One

Holy mackerel! I got a message from Jeremy Moses Curtis the other day and I almost fell out of my chair! Curtis, you may remember, was a driving force behind the East Coast’s The Curtis Mayflower, a band which floored me with its congruence of psyche, blues and soul about, what, fifty years ago? It was only a few, but it feels like fifty. I can’t remember what I wrote about their album Everything Beautiful Is Under Attack, but it must have been something like the psych and jamming side of the Bay Area’s Linn County meets the blues and soul of the seventies. You remember Linn County, don’t you? What? You don’t even remember The Curtis Mayflower?! Well, they probably have not been around long enough to be remembered.  And you call yourself a music fan.

It was one of my picks, not that it made a difference. Enough people found it but not enough for me. Falling in love with underdogs (underdogs of consequence) has pretty much been my life.

Curtis, when he messaged, asked if I would be willing to listen to his latest effort, a band he calls Thank God For Science. It is different than the Mayflower, he said, but it is something I felt compelled to do. He was right. It is different. And I understand the compulsion.   

I am not certain that Curtis is the wheel this band was wound around but it certainly would not surprise me. The man has drive and the biggest cheerleader the band has. Just the other day I asked him if he sang lead on any of the Mayflower songs and he pointed enthusiastically toward Craig Rawding, claiming him “a f**king force.” Which was why I asked. Rawding has the voice which puts the band over the top. The thing is, there is not a member in the band who is dispensable. Without one, the sound would be somehow different, maybe missing something.   

If Curtis did put Thank God For Science together, he decided to not rely on what he already had. He put together a band of equal ability, though he uses none of the Mayflower players, and the direction is quite different. Again, every band member belongs here.

You can tell right off with what I would call the intro to the album, “Breaking Channels,” one-minute and twenty-one seconds of what I used to label experimental kitsch— a collage of narration, ambience of a somewhat intriguing nature mixed with electronics and the occasional beat. One-minute and twenty-one minutes which is springboard to a beat-heavy semi-funk instrumental straight out of the mid-seventies, smooth and jazzy, to be replaced by “Ahoy Palloil,” a romantic jazz poem of sorts. “Hook Line and Sinker” makes me laugh on the inside but only because I ran projector in a porn theater in Los Angeles during those very same seventies and swear I could have been listening to the track while soft-focused bodies bumped uglies on the screen— I mean the music fits thye format, you know? Nice stuff, regardless. “Bass Age” lays out more of that kitcsh, the voice sounding straight out of a jazz poetry album of unknown origin, and “Pops” reminds me of the movies— the music they played for kids to dance to in the teen B-movies of the day. I can see them frugging and swimming themselves into a frenzy right now. “Jasper” is a musical landscape with an Americana base, impressive with its use of strings and pedal steel.   

You see where I’m going here? The band has taken the music of the past and weaved/wove/woven a new pattern, all instrumental, and would be very pleasant except that these guys are all on the same page and really know how to play! Not only that, it is sequenced beautifully, the songs flowing in and out as if the music was meant to be written exactly that way.   

Players are going to appreciate this— the way it sounds, the way it was put together. One of my favorite adventurous musicians, John Orsi, would love it too, may he rest in peace. He experimented with music much in the same way with his various bands, Knitting In Twilight and the others, hoping to capture those moments in time, and he did. So does Thank God For Science.

I think I need a beer. Maybe more than one. This is the kind of album I like to put on at a low volume so it doesn’t interfere with the sipping.  

Guess what? You can too. Just click on this link, pop a cold one and lay back. Yup, it’s streaming. But you need to buy one if you like it. I don’t want to see this little experiment end for some time.