A collaborator of Ty Segall, and Surfbort, Mellow Skunk (aka Matt Picola) is not shy of experimentation through musical genres and human escapism’s. “Air” feels like raindrops falling over a still body amidst chaos and infinite decision making. A trial and error of a world pushing in slow-motion but really falling apart. An excerpt of Mellow Skunk’s bio reads:
Mellow skunk crawled out of the 805. It played in caves and was lonely but smart. Taught rhythm by the pounding of a fathers foot on the floorboards of a Pontiac Grand Am, the skunk learned to love Jimi Hendrix with whom he shares a birthday.
High school was mostly ditched by the drunken house punk obsessed with 80’s squatter punks. The skunk felt low but tested high and snuck away to school and studied poetry under Rob Halpern and politics under Chris Connery.
Radicalized by its university moment it moved into punk houses and squats of the East Bay surrounded by a vibrant milieu of traveling punks, direct action advocates, and activists against police brutality. Within the setting of free food, clothes, and rent, house shows, house bands and house punk flourished.
Smoking weed led to an obsession with pandemic apocalypse and in 2005 birdflu magazine was born. But while bicycle mechanic work and courier work make sense in a apocalyptic mindset, the absence of any climactic break in the onslaught of late capitalism led the skunk to grow wary from unnecessary poverty.
As atmospheric as “Air” is first perceived to be, it doesn’t rely on gimmicks of post-punk clichés while it still is filled, in abundance, of emotional panic and stability, simultaneously. It riffs you away, like the sea to the sand, differently every time you hear it.
“Air” is out now via Black and White Cat Records.
