Linus Pauling Quartet, All Things Are Light

Damn. I’ll admit it: I may’ve been a bit hard on the Linus Pauling crew over the years. I’ve always liked the guys, definitely, they’ve always seemed nice and friendly and all that, and they’ve been supportive of the Houston scene since before I even came here. But I could never really get into the music — it always seemed a bit overlong, a bit too goofy, a bit too weird-for-weird’s-sake, y’know?

These days, though, I find myself warming to the band’s laidback-but-still-roaring psych-rock sound, and I can’t quite put my finger on why. Is it that I’m growing to appreciate this sort of psych more as I get older? Nah; I still rarely have the patience to sit through an album’s worth of noodly, blunt-worthy jams. Heck, if anything, I was more into the spacier, more psychedelic stuff back in college, when I could just bliss out on the dorm-room floor for a few hours at a stretch.

Could it be that the LP4 have gotten that much better over the years? Maybe, but they’ve always been a talented bunch of folks; when they play something that sounds fucked-up and bizarre, odds are that they meant it to sound that way. At the same time, there could be something here — maybe the reason I’m enjoying the hell out of the band’s latest release, All Things Are Light, is because while past releases have been hit-or-miss with me, Light knocks the damn thing out of the park.

Seriously, the album’s an absolute jaw-dropper, from the full-on fuzz-rock stomp of “Alien Abduction” (which makes me think weirdly of Silversun Pickups at points) on through the dirty blues of “She Bad, She Thowed” to the epic sprawl of “Waiting For The Axe To Fall.” Each track on here blazes with a warm, liquor-fueled energy, all sludge and scrape but without the sinister undertone of, say, Federation X — even at their darkest and gloomiest (like in the alternately narcotic and fiery “Southern Pine”), the Linus Pauling Quartet boys all wear sneaky, snarky, in-it-for-the-fun-of-it smiles.

That’s probably partly why I like All Things Are Light so much, really — I know I grumped about their past stuff being too silly, I’ll admit that there is something endearing about a band that’ll pen a sweet, countrified ode to that wonderful beverage that is malt liquor (“40 Oz.”). Plus, there’s the strange, bluesy H-town shoutout “She Bad, She Thowed,” which namechecks both the soon-to-be-destroyed Proletariat and local brew St. Arnold’s (and no, I’ve got no idea what “Thowed” means, honest), and the grungy, horn-laced stoner-garage rock of “Enchirito,” which proudly professes the band’s love of those godawful-looking Taco Bell concoctions.

And hey, I can’t forget the over-the-top Dungeons & Dragons-isms of “Waiting For The Axe To Fall,” a thundering, snarling story of a valiant warrior who is stabbed in the back and comes back from the grave, an unstoppable force of vengeance bent on destroying his killers. Done by a lesser band, it’d be flat-out ridiculous, but the Linus Pauling boys handle it with such straight-faced honesty that it flies in spite of itself. Not that they take themselves seriously, mind you — probably my favorite part of “Southern Pine” is at the very end where the band throws in left-right calls of “Oh, yeah!” and “Alright!” It’s like they’re ordering you to rock the fuck out, man.

I must confess, as well, that part of why I’m liking Light more than LP4’s previous releases is because they seem to’ve tightened things up somewhat, songwriting-wise. Where tracks on past releases (what I’ve heard of ’em, anyway) have noodled on past the 10-minute mark regularly, the band has knuckled down on this release and pared down their psych-operas to much more digestable “song”-sized chunks that you don’t need to be stoned to enjoy (the whole thing clocks in at 34 minutes or so, with seven whole songs packed into that time). Which helps folks like me, who have to listen to LP4 while sitting at their office-job desk and can’t really get baked while doing it.

The end result is a truly badass rock album that hits on psych, garage, and early metal pretty much equally, grabbing pieces from each genre to create a Frankensteinian monster that’s coated with a thick layer of fuzz, is lit up from the inside by a thousand or so TV tubes, and bleeds a thick, messy mix of motor oil and rotgut whiskey. The sludgy, crushing rock power of the band’s sound brings to mind Sabbath and Blue Cheer, not to mention more contemporary bands like Priestess, Federation X, or Early Man, and beats the hell out of the million or so pretenders crowding into the whole garage-rock stable.

All of which is to say: it’s good. No, scratch that: it’s great. All Things Are Light is the best damn thing I’ve heard yet from the Linus Pauling Quartet; it’s an album that makes me want to go back and reevaluate all their older stuff, too, to see how I could’ve blown ’em off for so long.