California psychedelic heavyweights Earthless played the last date of their Australia and New Zealand tour tonight at Perth’s Rosemount Hotel in support of their huge 2018 release ‘Black Heaven’ and their new live album ‘From the West’. It was fitting therefore that this series of Australian dates, their first in four years, ended in the West of Australia.
There was a sense of ‘end of tour euphoria’ tonight – that feeling that something a little special was going to happen and whether it did or not I’m still not sure as I’m still buzzing from the experience of my first Earthless concert after illness and injury has stopped me in the past. It was worth the wait just to see singer/guitarist Isaiah Mitchell, drummer Mario Rubalcaba and bassist Mike Eginton do their thing.
Since 2015 and that last tour down-under things have changed with the band who have moved away from being primarily instrumental to introducing more of Isaiah’s vocals on their latest studio outing ‘Black Heaven’. Now we get to hear those new combinations and layers that just add to the already prodigious sonic attack. ‘Cream’ of course have always been a reference point for the band, but now there are wafts of Zeppelin, and even a jam-band/classic rock nuance amidst the beautifully painted electric cosmic chaos.
On a night like tonight Earthless are peerless, just close you eyes and absorb the music, because this is music to be experienced as much as it is music to be heard. And whilst the chops of the musicians onstage might astound you, really Earthless is all about the sheer passion on display and the sheer joy of the songs.
Mitchell is a sheer force of nature on guitar, it feels at times he’s painting for the audience as the notes cascade into the air, and undercut with Rubalcaba’s earthshaking drums and Eginton’s soupy, sludgy groundswell of bass this trio is both solid and liquid concurrently. This is music that makes you feel alive and also music that hearkens back to the days when experimentation was rife and it felt like anything was possible. Something special that we seem to have lost along the way.
There may still be few words sung in an Earthless set but their sparsity gives them weight, attaches meaning and emphasis and fills in the gaps in the road when the music itself paints you towards a destination – be it a dessert highway, a magic carpet ride of a rocket to the cosmos. And that is the beauty of Earthless – they may well start out with a marker – a song like ‘Uluru Rock’ that acts as a jumping off point to the journey, but then the adventure begins and doesn’t stop and it’s that relentlessness and the change of scenery that is everything.
Mitchell at time seems lost in the guitar and the endless solo, but he’s driven by the relentless rhythms that take you everywhere from Blues to the Cosmic to Hard Rock and Punk, sometimes the changes catch you unaware and push you into confronting new realms and at other times you sink into a trance-like zen, before you are wrenched awake by a staccato bass line or a cymbal, or the wail of holy guitar.
And for those that wondered what kind of Rock band Earthless might be with a voice, then rest assured under all that guitar Isaiah Mitchell has anther wonderful instrument at his disposal and he showed Perth tonight what might be coming for Earthless down the line. If you’ve not seen the band before and want something more from your rock and roll – rest assured there is so much more life in this music we love. Bands like Earthless aren’t just ridiculing the notion that rock is dead, they are taking it to new places it’s never even been before.
PHOTO GALLERY
Photos by Adrian Thomson
