I’m not going to lie to you, I can be a vile and petty man. I will take against your band for any number of trivial reasons: a dodgy song title; a poor shirt design; a bad pun; perceived over-earnestness; perceived nonchalance; false piety; unearned arrogance – any number of piffling missteps can doom you. Top of the pile, though, has to be a shitty name, and if I was bored enough and had time enough to do any sort of statistical analysis I would wager that doom, stoner and sludge bands would be unfairly represented in the upper quartile. All the Witches and Wizards; all the Acids; all the Sleep references; all the endless ways that third-tier bands can sum up their third-tieredness with an on-the-nose monicker that shows how indebted they are to someone who already did what they’re doing but better. Oh, and almost anything with ‘bong’ in there, too. The band that is actually called ‘Bong’ somehow get a pass by dint of their sheer lung-crumpling stonedness; as do Bongzilla because they had the stupid idea to call themselves Bongzilla 28 years ago and have stuck to their guns ever since. But if you’re called Witch Bong or Bong Wizard or Electric Bong and aren’t world-alteringly incredible, then heaven fucking help you.
So here we are after all that, and here I am listening to a band called ‘Bong-Ra’. To say that the deck is loaded against them would be an understatement, but… they actually kind of rule. Theirs is a weird, borderline brand of doom that does indeed speak to both the stoned-as-fuck and jazz-as-fuck insinuations of their name: a traipsing, muddle-legged thing that fragments at inappropriate moments only to re-cohere in strange new ways. There are drones and groans, brass honks, an oud and many erratic percussive scuttlings, while riffs can crush and buckle or, occasionally, collapse into near-nothingness. While all this has the capacity to be infinitely frustrating, some alchemical force ensures it hangs together like a map of the stars inked by a lunatic. If you enjoy the mesmeric head-nod of Om, the shattered grandeur of Orthodox or the grand, cosmic vision of Neptunian Maximalism then you are onto a solid-gold winner with ‘Meditations’. Hear this, though, Bong-Ra: I still hate your name and will NOT be buying your t-shirt. Or, actually, I might, but I will NOT wear it outside the house.