sweet 'n heavy...

…Continuing in the vein of music that’s at once hard, heavy, and pleasing. Let’s keep calling it Rock Candy for short. Brant Bjork makes great Rock Candy Records. It’s funny to me that his name is Brant Bjork. When you picture the person behind the name, your mind conjures up an image of a blonde Aryan dude from Scandinavia, but then you see him and he looks like he’s from Spain or South America. Bjork is actually from Palm Desert and cut his teeth playing drums, first in Kyuss with Josh Homme, and then in Fu Manchu. And given this pedigree, you might expect his solo material to be more rock than candy. My taste will always be such that I prefer artists to err on the side of candy. But this is exactly what Bjork does when he’s on his own. He’s all about catchy riffs and poppy hooks, though his stuff is also admittedly pretty darn heavy at times. I don’t mind heaviness if it frames something sweet and compact. I can’t do Sabbath, or Deep Purple, or Led Zep these days, for example. Their stuff is too stretched out, with the focus placed on making the music as heavy as possible. Some progressive rock, by contrast, is expansive yet catchy without being too heavy, which I can take in limited doses. I’m thinking of bands like Caravan, Be Bop Deluxe, Jethro Tull, and Utopia…What makes me head for the exits is music that’s simultaneously windy, heavy and anti-pop. It seems that the Palm Desert ‘stoner’ scene birthed at least some music where the riffs are the main thing and heaviness coexists in a nice equilibrium with catchy hooks. Along with Queens of the Stone Age, Brant Bjork is one of the best examples of this. Play today’s selection at 7:30am, and I guarantee it’ll still be in your head at dinner time. Ain’t nothin’ gonna stop the rock tonight. Yes, indeed…