Carlton Melton - Photos Of Photos (2012)

On their third album, Carlton Melton stake out their own space in the drone/stoner/psych/zoneout wing of things ever more clearly -- if the field is at this point a very familiar and full one, they actually make the effort to show why they're worth paying attention to across six often lengthy tracks. At points their approach is more like providing catnip to well-inclined fans, admittedly, as the nice noodling of "Wingspan" demonstrates, and the fact that they can demonstrate their abilities on shorter and gentler tracks is also worth noting. The title song is if anything about shimmering guitar bliss rather than skullcrushing riffs while steering away from immediate rhythms. But then again, that song appears right after the opening "Nor' easter," which starts out as a slow steady dank melancholy psychedelic number and just continues from there, into ominous wah-wah and then evil but stately David Gilmour-styled guitar parts as it goes. Then there's the mighty "Adrift," which goes big, dark, and beautiful from the get-go, then heads up into some massive Olympian levels of throbbing awe, stirring and loud and into the infinite, a slow progression for heads that gets completely crazy via overdubs into the final zoneout at the end. If "Space Treader" and "Smoke Drip" are comparatively calmer songs, in ways it's almost only by default.