About a month ago, JD Pinkus of the Butthole Surfers and Mike Savino of Tall Tall Trees announced the collaborative album Ponder Machine, a record on which traditional bluegrass takes a detour into something psychedelic and, at times, otherworldly. It’s quite a trip, and not what you would expect from its description. It goes to strange places, as evinced by the video for new song ‘Afterlifers’, directed by Pinkus himself.
It’s a straightforward enough performance clip with other dimensions seeming to creep in at the edges, Savino and Pinkus locked in, close harmony and all, as they express their desire to party on the other side – if there’s a heaven, they want to raise hell, or as Savino puts it: “A classic tale in which the author gazes blankly into the omphalos only to find the most ragiest of ragers at the end of the rainbow. And his dog is there. Recording-wise, this tune started off as a nice little banjo plunker and somewhere along the way, took a sharp left onto Roger McGuinn Blvd. I’m not sure what we did there. It was pretty much an accident, but a good one.”
Turn on, tune in and drop out below; Ponder Machine is out on Friday June 30th via Shimmy-Disc.
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