Cul De Sac

I've always found this band's multi-track studio albums a bit too cold, sterile and meandering, but this outing sees the group recording live-to-air and off-the-floor at college radio station WBRS, lending the session a much-needed sense of levity and immediacy that had previously been lacking. Consisting of one continuous semi-improvised "suite," while maintaining the pace-wise cohesion of a collection of distinct songs, Immortality Lessons' well-engineered warmth and sensitive playing manages to both successfully and unembarrassingly hearken back to that distinctly Amon Duul/Can pseudo-ethnic sensibility while holding its own against such modern-day peers as Jackie-O Motherfucker and the Shalabi Effect. Sometimes, as it's made clear here, space and subtlety can best bring those crucial momentary surprise payoffs to the fore, especially if you happen to belong to the ever-cluttered ranks of the "experimental jam band."