Ibex Clone

Ibex Clone

Gravity

Goner

***As human beings, we develop and implement systems. Mechanical, scientific, political, musical. Two assumptions tend to follow. First: these systems set us apart from the natural environment. Second: once implemented, a system should remain in place indefinitely. But these assumptions overlook a deeper truth. As human beings, we create systems, yes. But only as part and parcel of the world around us. We are ourselves systems evolving within larger systems. A third album can be a lot of things. A radical shift in sound or subject, a commercial breakthrough, a limp retread. Always an evolution. With Gravity, Ibex Clone have inevitably, beautifully evolved further into themselves. Recorded in a backyard punk dump by Memphis audio legend Andrew McCalla, Gravity finally sounds like Ibex Clone in the flesh. A powerful live trio unencumbered by allegiance to any genre signifiers, making physical music in the environment that best suits them. Whereas their first two albums projected cautious visions of utopia through a glassy, hard-edged lens, Gravity pulls everything inward into something altogether warmer and stronger, personal and immediate. This is the folk-tinged rock of the Kinks and Fairport Convention, but filtered through a fuzzy SST sensibility, a decidedly progressive album with as much time for pop hooks as post punk’s thousand-yard stare. Undergirded by Alec McIntyre’s sinuous basslines, George Willford stretches out into languid solos and ambient passages of flanging, e-bowed guitar. Drummer Meredith Lones takes a much stronger vocal presence, her voice a silver lining that draws the band’s dense, heady...

Ibex Clone

All Channels Clear

Goner

Imagine a world apart from our own—an agrarian utopia where the corroded cables of the 20th century lie in moss-covered heaps and the Mississippi River runs clear. New structures rise from the detritus, gnarled patchworks of the natural world and everything else humanity left behind. This is a world where Nirvana and NAFTA never happened, punk didn’t break but bloomed, and guitars jangle in the breeze. This is the world of Ibex Clone and their new album, All Channels Clear. Formed by members of essential bands from the modern era of Memphis rock and roll, Ibex Clone reconfigures the paranoiac punk of Ex-Cult, NOTS and Hash Redactor into something altogether different, a vision of music from a timeline that split with ours a long time ago. Guitarist George Williford’s dizzy six- and twelve-string explorations form a lush thicket for Alec McIntyre’s fluid basslines to slip in and around, anchored by Meredith Lones’ steady, driving rhythms. Williford’s powerful vocal melodies ward off impending death and decay with visionary lyrics about humanity’s place in the ecosystem, the balm of love and friendship, and the complex feeling of being alive in this version of the world of tomorrow. With All Channels Clear, Ibex Clone develops the woozy, folk-tinged post-punk of their excellent debut From Nowhere into a catchy, complex approach to the pastoral power pop of XTC, the Meat Puppets, and Guided By Voices. These ten beautiful tracks tunnel back through the shredded remains of folk, pop, blues and psychedelia to rediscover the...