moe. Album Reviews

WORMWOOD

Blender
March 2003

moe.
Wormwood
**** (4 out of 5)

"Jam band from upstate New York turn themselves into Hacky Sack stars"

A mainstay of the granola circuit since 1991, moe. have evolved live from a mere jam band into a euphoric hurricane. Guitarists Chuck Garvey and Al Schnier shred like Tasmanian devils in heat as two percussionists whip the music into a polyrhythmic froth reminiscent of Frank Zappa jamming with the Grateful Dead. Wormwood, the group's fifth studio album, seamlessly integrates both stage and studio tracks, alternating terrific semiautobiographical songs about growing up, such as the
nostalgic "Kids" and the life-saving rocker "Okayalright," with increasingly experimental instrumentals. Naming your record after the active ingredient in absinthe is boastful, but Wormwood is an intoxicating spin.

- Richard Gehr

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Entertainment Weekly
moe.
Wormwood

For a decade, the Buffalo, NY, quintet have been a cult phenomenon in search of material that best serves their prodigous musicianship, a situation that's rectified on their 10th studio album. Picking up threads from Southern rock, '70's arena anthems, and the serene groovology of moe.'s jamband contemporaries, "Wormwood" meanders amiably but never gets too fuzzy. B+ -- Marc Weingarten

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Los Angeles Times
moe.
Wormwood

(3 stars out of 4)
Songs matter to moe. And noodling is no substitute, a notable distinction within the groove-heavy ouvre of jam bands. The New York act opens "Wormwood" (in stores Tuesday) with the anxious folk-rock of "Not Coming Down," shuffling and rocking harder than R.E.M., before drifting into an improvisiational title track. Less Phish than Allman Brothers, moe. jams freely but never wanders out of tune. The group plays the Wiltern on Feb. 13. - Steve Appleford

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Philadelphia Inquirer

moe.
Wormwood
(***)

The men of moe. rarely play the "jam band" game well. Their guitars slip between the crackle of Southern metal and the lap-steel solos of country psychedelia. Their songs condense watery melodies and winding chord passages into blunt pop. The result, throughout their 11 years of recording, is usually a jumble that is and isn't part of the jam genre.For Wormwood, moe. freaks a little further, experimenting with a concert-studio hybrid in which the raw material of live-show improvisations is dabbled with and added onto for a mix of serendipity and discipline.

Wormwood is not as psyche-expanding as its absinthe-related title. It is an often-brusque combination of silly-but-sincere lyrics, Zappa-style complexities, and Deadlike laconism that can be brassy ("Not Coming Down"), militaristic ("Bullet"), or surprisingly cinematic ("Crab Eyes"). - A.D. Amorosi

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New York Post
February 4, 2003
moe.
"Wormwood"

"Buffalo jam band moe. has transferred its noodling talents to the studio on "Wormwood."

It's a problem every jam band from the Grateful Dead to Phish has faced: Can the sublime nihilism of noodling be captured in the studio? On "Wormwood," Buffalo jammers moe. comes up with an outstanding, unique solution.The group snagged the best live recordings from its recent gigs, dubbed additions where songs were thin, and edited out the repetition.

The result is a record that flows and builds like a concert."Wormwood" is playful and improvisational, yet tight enough to fit on a single disc.

At one point, the quintet sounds like southern rockers, and in the next song, it slips easily into an East L.A. Latin riff. You can compare moe. to many bands, but the musicians' sense of adventure, range and expertise are most reminiscent of Lowell George's Little Feat.

While the band is recognizable for Al Schnier's vocal acrobatics, what takes this disc to its heights is the intertwined percussion/drum work of Jim Loughlin and Vinnie Amico, who set and define almost every piece with the kind of driving rhythms rarely allowed to blossom in the studio.

The bonus: The songs are all pretty good, too. - Dan Aquilante

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Washington Post
Style
moe.
Wormwood

Ever since the Grateful Dead eased out the clutch on a tour bus, jam bands have been dependable for two things: Ambitious concerts and lackluster albums. Other than "Who's got a miracle?" and "Did you eat the last ganja goo ball?" the most urgent question for fans has been "Why can't [insert jam band name here] make a great studio record?" New York noodlers Moe (who style themselves "moe.") don't have the answer. But they're rethinking the riddle.

Hoping to capitalize on the improvisational magic that transforms concert tunes from atmospheric to stratospheric, the veteran rockers hijacked a CD's worth of live basic tracks and disappeared into a recording space. There, they spliced, overdubbed and re-jammed. The resulting Frankenstein's studio monster isn't quite revolutionary: Hey, it's still just a batch of tunes. But if you like the idea of a studio album that feels like a live album -- or is it vice versa? -- well, Moe power to you.

Moe thrives on vocal harmonies, twin electric-guitar offensives and occasionally vapid choruses -- a combination that powers the infectiously headbanging "Okayalright," which unabashedly cops a riff from the Southern-rock songbook. (Get over it; neo-hippies are into recycling.) Other potent nuggets include the prog-metal-turned-reggae of "Crab Eyes," the psychedelic, echoing "Bullet" and the dreamy title track, which drifts like smoke. The quintet gently reins in its stretched-out live style, which limits moments of pure guitar orgasm -- "Kyle's Song" being a cathartic exception. But freaky between-track keyboard segues keep "Wormwood" hurtling through space even when the jams are grounded.

-- Michael Deeds

DITHER

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Rolling Stone (RS 866)
moe.
Dither
RS Rating: 4 stars

For a so-called "jam band," moe. have a gift for brevity. Of the dozen songs on the group's fifth studio album, only four go long, and then modestly so: an average of six minutes apiece. Everything else on Dither is airtight groove-adelia, compact essays in twin-guitar sunshine and boyish-vocal cheer.

But in its gleaming rigor, Dither is not the antithesis of noodle rock; it is the way forward. Too many of moe.'s peers confuse the art of jamming with the easy fun of spinning out over a springy rhythm and a locked chord progression. But the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers and the early Cream were all, in their fashion, lords of discipline: Olympian players and killer writers who improvised with the telepathy of composers. The men of moe. are a few years and LPs away from that kind
of transcendence. But singer-bassist Rob Derhak, singer-guitarists Al Schnier and Chuck Garvey, drummer Vinnie Amico and percussionist Jim Loughlin have figured out how to integrate song and sprawl. The result is muscular guitar pop with room for rambling.

You can hear the spaces reserved for live fireworks in the raga- flavored tropicalia of "So Long" and the crunchy spunk of "Understand." The immediate payoff, though, is the clean, terse detail of Schnier and Garvey's interplay: the meaty skate of the guitars against the melting-snowfall harmonies in "Water"; the narcotic tangle of twang in "Opium." The restraint may be too much for taper's-section heads. But records and gigs were different worlds for the Dead and the Allmans, too. The trick is to live fully in each; moe. are settling in nicely.

DAVID FRICKE

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