Album: Eyes Adrift

Eyes Adrift, Cooking Vinyl

Most interest in the alt.rock "supergroup" Eyes Adrift will probably derive from it being the first significant project from Krist Novoselic since his days as bassist with Nirvana; but the decisive presence here is surely former Meat Puppets singer and guitarist Curt Kirkwood, who along with ex-Sublime drummer Bud Gaugh completes the band's line-up. Taking vocal duties on all but three of the 12 songs, and liberally sprinkling his distinctive, fluid guitar runs throughout the album, Kirkwood brings the essential spark of magic that might secure Eyes Adrift a longer tenure than most supergroups – provided, that is, they can steer clear of the kind of fruitless feedback and drum-pummelling indulgence that inflates the album finale "Pasted" into a 15-minute bore-a-thon. It's a misleading conclusion to series of tightly-wrought songs. The album opens in fairly undemonstrative manner with the even-handed, jazzy lope of "Sleight Of Hand", as if the musicians were mapping out common ground rather than battling for position, before Kirkwood returns, in songs such as "Alaska", "Solid" and "Untried", to the desire for elemental authenticity that marked so much of his Meat Puppets work. "Directionless, untried and true/ Some things appear out of the blue," he muses on "Untried", perhaps outlining his aesthetic preferences. Elsewhere, echoes of REM and Neil Young surface in the arpeggiated melodies and guitar vamps of "Slow Race" and "What I Said" respectively, while the psychedelic rockabilly blast of "Dottie Dawn & Julie Jewel" provides the most entertaining showcase for Kirkwood's dizzying bursts of demon picking.