Whisker Fatigue by Golden Brown

Under the Golden Brown moniker, Stefan Beck has carved out a comfortable niche for himself over the past several years. The Colorado-based guitarist’s discography is packed with expert acoustic fingerpicking, warm melodies, gentle lap steel reveries and twinkling electronics. It’s music that provides the listener with a welcome escape, a dreamy sonic landscape to wander amidst. And if Beck stayed planted in this particular landscape, blowing smoke rings in the Shire on a sunny afternoon, that’d be just fine.

But Whisker Fatigue suggests that there are further corners of the Golden Brown-iverse left to explore — much darker corners. From the very first moments of “Beelzebufo,” it’s clear that Beck is guiding us through swampier territory, something akin to the slo-mo elegy of Miles Davis’ “He Loved Him Madly” or the low-sun western hauntology of Earth’s The Bees Made Honey In The Lion’s Skull.

Stretching out to almost 15 minutes, “Beezelbufo” (named for a fearsome, thankfully extinct amphibian from the late Cretaceous also known as “the devil frog,”) oozes with a strange, primordial dread. A busted thrift store organ and spectral percussion all contribute to an ever-deepening chthonic wooziness, with the silvery strands of Beck’s electric guitar serving as the only lifelines to keep us from disappearing completely into the mire.

The album’s other epic, “Boom Boom Pachyderm” feels similarly heavy, ghostly harmonics and funereal keyboard accents from Prairiewolf’s Jeremy Erwin floating over restless seas, uneasy rhythms. This is music that feels closely in tune with the modern malaise, when the way forward is unclear, when storm clouds seem to be constantly gathering on the horizon.

Fear not, Whisker Fatigue isn’t fully doom-stricken. Throughout there are glimmers of light — like the playful dubby textures of the title track, or the steady momentum of “Cross Pollination,” or the mystical guitar work that drives “Ancestral Slime.” Beck doesn’t want to abandon us to a desolate fate in the Swamps of Sadness; this is just one more beautiful chapter in the Golden Brown saga. Go ahead and sink into it.

- Tyler Wilcox

Golden Brown is the instrumental music of Stefan Beck. Played on acoustic and electric guitars, other stringed instruments, and keyboards. Drawing from a wide range of inspirations, Beck’s music sits at the intersection of psychedelic folk, ambient, cosmic Americana, and new age.

Whisker Fatigue is up for preorder now. Out 6/13 on Eiderdown Records.

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