Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. One man's trash is another's treasure. It's the emperor's new clothes. It's an acquired taste. All these aphorisms apply when describing the "music" created by the Sunburned Hand of the Man. It could be said that to appreciate their material one has to be "in the right mood," or perhaps more accurately, one has to be able to suspend all disbelief. Because what this ensemble creates is not so much music as free-association through sound. And although there exist other practitioners of so-called free music -- "free" in the same sense as free jazz, but with different instrumentation -- some groups are more successful (Jackie-O Motherfucker, the Vanishing Voice) and some less (No-Neck Blues Band), and for the most part Sunburned belong in the latter category. Some reviews of this album put it ahead of the band's other output, some say it goes beyond what they've done in the past, some even qualify it as more "rocking" (it's definitely a "louder" album for them, but still entirely devoid of riffs, structure or melody). But on close listen and without the hyperbole, what you've got here fits in neatly with the rest of the band's oeuvre, as in, it's basically more of the same: five unnamed tracks of shambling, clanging, clattering, formless free-folk and rock improvisation, drone and noise that are capable of invoking shamanic trance and hypnotic bliss or interminable boredom and even extreme annoyance, depending on how altered one's state is (or how open to suggestion). Be that as it may, plenty of sonically adventurous souls will appreciate this collection in the same aesthetic light as any in the band's catalog or the overall genre's canon, and there's nothing wrong with that. However, a caveat is appropriate here: another applicable aphorism comes from the members of Spinal Tap, who made the sage observation, "It's such a fine line between stupid...and clever." ~ Brian Way, Rovi