Jeff McLeod's "Not Good Enough"

Montgomery, Alabama, the Capital of Dreams, isn't a place I would expect to find experimental DIY psychedelic musicians. But I could be wrong. I spent six weeks there once, back in Y2K, attending Academic Instructor School at Maxwell Air Force Base. While there, I visited Maya Lin's Civil Rights Memorial and Hank Williams' grave (among British and French aviators who were killed in WW2 training accidents). My buddy Steve King (a C-130 loadmaster, not The Master of Suspense) and I spent evenings passing his acoustic back and forth, making up songs about our fellow students. But Montgomery's also the home of my old HIO collaborator Terry Horn -- and the subject of this piece, "multi-instrumentalist and goofy sort of musical experimentalist" Jeff McLeod. So in this case, I'm delighted to eat my words.

Jeff's career dates back to the '90s, when he was a member of the noise-rock band bert, who had an album produced by Steve Albini. He's a founder of the Alabama Improv Co-op and the Subversive Workshop newsletter/record label. He splatters psychedelic guitar skree all over Dynamic Negativism, a 2002 duet album with North Carolina polymath Bret Hart. He undertakes some of the damnedest impressionistic solo live Chapman Stick explorations I could even imagine on 2004's MUST: A Crackpot Life Study in Five Movements. 

On the other hand, he's also responsible for the gentle solo guitar tranquility (with a little reverb and eBow) of 2009 Dutch release Ever-Stretching Shadow. He also created a trio of electronic realizations under the Forethinking rubric, and a trilogy of recordings (Under Dim Self, Scalps of Gods, and Borne Down Upon, released 2011-2013) that employ sampling, synthesis, and McLeod's voice to express what was on his mind at that time. And I'm just scratching the surface here (working my way forward, slowly).

But now to the matter at hand -- namely, McLeod's current release, Not Good Enough, just released April 19 and available digitally or on CD via his Bandcamp page. McLeod says it's a "'proof-of-concept' album about [his] (unhealthy) relationship with musicks." I don't doubt that for a minute. The first thing I noticed when I cued up "Faking" (the featured track on Bandcamp), once I got past the dark, moody atmospherics of the intro, was that McLeod sings a lot like Daron Beck from Pinkish Black, minus the vocal F/X Daron's been known to favor -- a good thing in my book, since both men have distinctive low-register quivers, the perfect vehicle for conveying the aura of menace that Jeff does here. When McLeod takes off an a quavering, pitch-altered guitar solo, it sounds like a second voice shaking in terror.

Unlike lots of weird-music makers, McLeod isn't one to forego melody or thematic development, so on an extended instrumental like "Quaalude Eggs," the listener's free to turn off their mind, relax and float downstream and not worry -- Cap'n Jeff is steering the riverboat, from one diverting musical episode to the next. The harmonized guitars on "Old Ideas (modified)" put me in mind of the Allmans (the recently departed Dickey Betts being very much in my thoughts these days) or maybe Captain Beyond (the FM radio appearance of whose "Sufficiently Breathless" once rescued me from a very not-good LSD experience).

Taking it back to the top, the title track (which opens the album) returns to the headspace occupied by the aforementioned Pinkish Black, or maybe Scott Walker circa The Drift. "Nonaudience" is a nicely orchestrated blend of actual and virtual instruments, with McLeod's voice and guitar as colors in his artist's palette (or running down his canvas). Not Good Enough is proof positive that the advent of sampling and sequencing technology enabled great leaps forward in psychedelic music production by DIY tinkerers like Jeff McLeod (or closer to home, kindred spirits like Liquid Sound Company and Herd of Instinct). A sonic bath I could get in the habit of immersing myself in. I'd say it's plenty good enough.