Spirit Caravan--The Last Embrace
MeteorCity 2003
When most people look back at the "stoner rock" boom period of several years ago, it feels like a chore trying to find music that wasn't disposable. Of all the things wrong about that place in time and how things ultimately unfolded for it, there was one timeless gem that came out of it all--the mighty Spirit Caravan. Not only were they coming from a place of truth and power lost on virtually every other band in their own corner of the musical universe, while they were a band, Spirit Caravan were the best band on the planet, period. Unfortuantely, in recent times, the band's entire musical output fell out of print. Meteorcity has mercifully rectified that crime against humanity with this 2CD, Last Embrace, collecting virtually everything the masters ever cut.
Those who have all the original pressings of this material and think they can get away with passing on Last Embrace because of it are sadly mistaken. The remastering job that was done on this stuff is absolutely sick, each voice maintaining the perfect amount of seperation and making the music literally come alive off the speakers. The material from the Elusive Truth album especially benefits from this treatment, while the Jug Fulla Sun output becomes inconceivably greater than before (it is one of the best albums of all time, in case you didn't know). It is as much a joy consuming all this brilliance today as it was those years backs--nothing has come since that's even close to this.
As an even greater bonus, Last Embrace provides you with quite a few Spirit Caravan rarities and vinyl only tracks. This has its positives and negatives. While the version of "The Departure" taken from the Rise 13 compilation, included here instead of the album version, is better than the rendition found on Elusive Truth, the same cannot be said of the pre-Spirit Cravan renditions of "Courage," "Powertime," and "Lost Sun Dance" taken from the Shine 7" which supplant the Jug Fulla Sun versions. It is a blessing to have these rarities and they aren't bad by any stretch of the imagination, though the ideal scenario would've been to include all available versions of the songs. This is just a minor detail, though, and does not lessen the essential nature of Last Embrace.
Listening to the unreleased final recordings the band made is when you start missing Spirit Caravan most. They were really starting to stretch on that material, including a predominant use of acoustic instrumentation. Who knows how much more legendary output they would've delivered if the band had managed to hold together. Last Embrace stands as a fitting monument to one of the greatest bands ever and serves as further proof Spirit Caravan were almost too good for this world.
Score this CD directly from METEORCITY
|
