Skip to main contentFinally, a non-masturbatory double album.
[SCHIZOPHRENIC ROCK] No Go Know frontman Scott Taylor is a prick.
Not really, but that's what he felt like when suggesting that the band's second full-length be a double album. In crafting Time Has Nothing to Do With It, Taylor, bassist Mark McIntire and drummer Sam Smith opted to make like Peter North and get lengthy.
"I said, 'Let's be assholes and make a double album,'" says 31-year-old Taylor with a laugh. He was phoning in from Philadelphia during the band's three-week tour, which ends with the album's release at Kelly's Olympian on Aug. 2. "Everyone's response was, 'You're a pretentious idiot. You don't do that, especially when you're an unknown band nobody gives a crap about.'"
Like My Morning Jacket, the four-year-old trio straddles the line between classic and contemporary rock, sometimes teetering toward jamminess before shifting to prog rock mid-chorus. On Time, No Go Know dips its fingers into nearly everything—space rock, funk, disco, pop, fusion—oftentimes during the same song.
"I think in really schizophrenic terms," says Taylor. "Sam and I work in mental health. We're used to that line of thinking."
And schizo is just the right word. Still, unlike many double albums (we're looking at you, Billy Corgan), there's no clutter here. Rhyme or reason is scarce on the 90-minute opus, but it's so well crafted it's impossible for listeners to get bored.
Time's 18 tracks range from the swampy thump of "My Black Dog" to the Santana-style guitar of "Life Is Forever for Everyone," prodded by a pulsing samba beat. Slide guitar and gentle harmonies on the heartfelt, nine-minute "Is It Getting Better?" veer a little country, while "End of the Stay" tells a dark tale of assault, with crashing drums punctuating the violence. "There Is No End to What We Need" plays like Radiohead by way of Soundgarden.
"I don't know how anyone's going to process [the album]," says Taylor, adding that the band has had difficulty finding a hometown audience. But No Go Know's devil-may-cry identity gives it strength. Its unwillingness to contort into a mold is ballsy. And based on the strength of Time Has Nothing to Do With It, the band should ensnare audiences in its gleeful abandon in due time. Unless No Go Know does something to screw it up. "Next is a triple album," Taylor jokes.
GO: No Go Know releases Time Has Nothing to Do with It at Kelly's Olympian. Sunday, Aug. 2. 8 pm. $4. 21+.
WWeek 2015