Sunburned Hand of the Man :: “Nimbus” - Three Lobed Recordings
There’s no sort of hesitation within the holy hysteria, or radioactive response in high praise, that Boston’s brainchild of visceral vibrations and cosmic conclusions has yet to receive in its near 3 decade-long lifetime. Both calculated and challenging to the world around them, Sunburned Hand of the Man is carefully understood via the inhale of the most perfect drag from the sacred lung of life by the audience that adores the calcified community richness and collective treasures of the band. Where the cold occult’s oscillations radiate between flame and fortune and the natural world begs for mercy as time further extends forward, an unforgiving momentum in history always seems to be repeating, but their response to the past, present and future of politics, psychology, free expression in the art of life and prettified prose in music is simply sublime and lawless in that they play with metaphysical matches in a divided world of flame retardent isolation and confusion.
A community of collective consciousness, Sunburned Hand of the Band are perhaps one of the greatest forces in independent music since that of the rise and radical establishment of Phoenix, Arizona’s Sun City Girls. A cosmic circus of cohesive creatures channeling the far-out fasting rituals of ancient practices that date back to the early to mid 90s when they first identified as the Shit Spangled Banner, the group’s core members consisted of John Moloney and Robert Thomas, with extensive recruitments from the realm of shadows that would feature names over the years such as Rich Pontius, Chad Cooper, Keith Wood, Marc Orleans, Paul LaBrecque and countless others spread out across the band’s immaculate ecosystem of divine lunacy. With titles like 2002’s “Headdress” (the band’s explosive masterpiece), “Anatomy” (my personal introduction to the band), “Z” (the band’s debut on Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace! Imprint), “Complexion” and “A Grand Tour of Tunisia”, SBHOTM have sincerely and spiritually secured themselves in supersonic stone with a delirious devotion and monumental motivation in the mediation of music making that will forever remain a blueprint for band’s to discover for centuries to come.
The release of last spring’s “Nimbus” on the band’s home away from, Three Lobed Records, is only a testament to the band’s indestructible integrity to manifest and maneuver through the times like that of some historical draft that punctures through the anatomical atmosphere like a blade battered with ballads. With the album’s opening, title track gracing the elated ears of its listeners with a reading from Peter Gizzi’s poem "Fierce Elegy", the album affords this already calm dialogue that eagerly explores the depths of the damaged psyche by elevating the existential panic of wages, worship of war and the woes of the world at large. With an ode to the masters of technical trickery on "Lily Thin", an interpretation and an amalgamation of Lily Twil (Younes Megri) and Sun City Girls’ “Cruel and Thin”, the album’s multi-textured horizon dwells on a fierce familiarity that we all adore and embrace when it comes to SBHOTM, but “Nimbus” unleashes another element of extraterrestrial excitement that is contemporary with age, wisdom and a bountiful catalog from some of the most inspiring veterans in music in the last 30 years.
