It begins with a mighty, meaty warpath-clearer of a guitar riff — imagine Black Sabbath slowed down or Dead Meadow slightly sped up. But Skullflower’s first album since 1996 doesn’t aim to rock you like a hurricane. Fifty-three of “Exquisite’s” 72 minutes find this endlessly recycling theme caught in varying states of sonic distress — shadowed by roiling licks funneled through a battery of effects pedals, ravaged by reverb, wrapped in towering, quavering Northern Lights-sized tones, smothered in snarling Dead C scrawls. So when Skullflower changes gears and goes all Neu!-school for “Saturn” — a motorik confection of deadpan drumbeats and lava-lamping synth washes — the relief comes on surprisingly strong; it’s like stumbling upon a grassy clearing in the middle of a gnarled forest.
This article appears in Nov 26 – Dec 2, 2003.