Psychedelic Rockers Wooden Indian Burial Ground Get Seriously Strange on "How's Your Favorite Dreamer?"

By Shannon Gormley

[SERIOUSLY STRANGE] It's hard to be a truly weird psych-rock band these days, considering there's just so damn many of them. But on its latest album, How's Your Favorite Dreamer?, Wooden Indian Burial Ground succeeds in creating an all-out freak-fest. The album is a trippy, chaotic foray through a funhouse maze of guitar feedback, glockenspiels, organs, squawking saxophones, horror-movie screams and odd noises. Even the lengths of the songs are all over the place, ranging from under 90 seconds to over six minutes. The most traditional song is the Black Angels-style "Burnout Beach," but even that veers into a void of feedback and wind chimes. As a whole, How's Your Favorite Dreamer? is more in the spirit of kraut legends Faust than the current wave of riff-obsessed psych rockers, more interested in experimenting with the boundaries of the genre than crafting immediate hooks. At times, the album feels aimless, but it's always unhinged, and the commitment to unchecked weirdness is what makes it so gleefully shambolic.

SEE IT: Wooden Indian Burial Ground plays the Spare Room, 4830 NE 42nd Ave., with Ice Queens and Old Unconscious, on Friday, Aug. 12. 9 pm. $5. 21+.

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