Cheer-Accident – I Want My Buddha Back (self release) – There are essentially two types of Cheer-Accident albums, there are the “proper” ones, the full on prog rock epics, the masterworks, recent treats of albums like Here Comes The Sunset or the massive thing that was and is Chicago XX and then there’s the more experimental low key albums that they almost sneak out while no one is looking. The Chicago band have been at it as long as we have, they started putting albums out in the mid eighties, some of those “sneaky” albums can be seriously hard-boiled experimental things, albums that challenges the makers of the music as much as they do the listeners. Cheer-Accident have, thankfully, never been straight forward or easy, (even when they do easy listening). Never throwaway though, Cheer-Accident are a proper art rock band, a serious band, they don’t do throwaway, everything they do really (really) matters and the rock ensemble headed by Thymme Jones are one of the world’s finest. Whatever they’re doing you know it will be rewarding, you know it is going to be worth your time, soemtimes it might take a few goes, but you know to stick with it, or at least come back to it later. They say this album is “guitarry and noisy and (mostly) spontaneous”, they add that it is “nearly pleasurable”, it sounds very pleasurable to these ears, almost soothing at times, seductive, awkwardly so.
Way back in 2002, when they were introducing Lemon, Cheer-Accident posed the question, “Who’s gonna wait for Buddha?” Initially, they had surely delivered the question rhetorically, but years went by and it became clear that it was they who had been waiting for Buddha this whole time. Eventually, Buddha did indeed “wax benign” and come to them. Taking place in February of 2024, this unexpected visitation led to Jeff, Angie, DroneLayer and Alex picking up their guitars, Thymme finding his drumsticks, and the five of them recording some rather cacophonous rock. Strangely (and this is the weirdest part), the very next day a note was left, apparently from the person whose Buddha had descended upon the CheerAx Basement, reading, “I want my Buddha back.” Okay, okay! Nobody’s gonna prevent your Buddha from returning home, but you might at least want to check out the sounds your Buddha inspired before welcoming him back.
The album was released last Friday September 6th, 2024, if I have it right, released as a Bandcamp download only thing. It isn’t the kind of album that needs a great big review and lots of words, it is experimental, beautifully so, it isn’t shallow, this is proper art, it isn’t as “difficult” as they can sometimes be, not so obtuse as they sometimes like to be, I could write pages about, you can just go find out for yourself though, it is an album that kind of needs ears rather than words, we’ll save the words for the “proper” ones, this is properly good! (sw)
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