As frontman of San Francisco psyche-rockers Wooden Shjips and one half of the more Krautrock-influenced Moon Duo (with partner Sanae Yamada), Ripley Johnson has been responsible for some of the past decade’s most mesmeric and beguiling albums. Yet his second LP as Rose City Band (he plays everything except drums, where John Jeffrey helps out) might be the best of the bunch. Owing much to 1970s country rock, RCB’s signature sound is essentially the same as Wooden Shjips’s, only with their defining fuzzed-up guitars stripped away to reveal warm, lazily blissed-out songs underpinned by relentless motorik rhythms.
There are echoes of the Byrds’ I Wasn’t Born to Follow (Only Lonely) and the restless momentum of Dylan circa Highway 61 Revisited (Real Long Gone). But for the most part these eight songs stand on their own merits, unfurling unhurriedly with Johnson’s understated vocals offset by gently spiralling guitar lines that are as hypnotic as they are breezy – never more so than on the closing sprawl of Wee Hours seguing seamlessly into Wildflowers. In an increasingly fraught world, it’s an unashamedly sunny sound. It makes for a gorgeous record in which to lose yourself for 40 minutes.
