The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #258

#258: "Wucan" (2008) - Black Mountain

Another week, another theme, though this time, I'm not going to declare what the theme is ('cause it should be easy enough to guess). We'll begin this week with the Vancouver stoner-rock band Black Mountain. This year, with their second LP In the Future, band leader Stephen McBean and friends abandon their (somewhat) softer, folksier, and poppier side and rocket into the psychedelic stratosphere, and their new record is a classic of sorts, as it works exceptionally well as an album, one where you can just sit back, let the thing run its entire course, and feel as one with whatever universe your mind may inhabit when it's not inhabiting this one. Next time I go to the dentist, I'm bringing along my iPod, and I'm playing this album while the novocaine works its wonders.

Even though the album is nearly a seamless segue of psychelica, one track makes the jump to hyperspace. "Wucan" (a witches' dance, the archaic term dating back to Anglo-Saxon times and the Venerable Bede) is a wonderful, trippy melange of Black Sabbath (the rhythm section), Blue Cheer (the fuzz guitars during the post-chorus), Iron Butterfly (the primitive-sounding Moog synthizer during the verses, who's earthy, lo-fi sound adds to the creepy skullduggery feel of the thing), and Pink Floyd (the keyboard solos and the space-y production). McBean's lyrics are just cryptic enough to be be creepy, especially if you catch the hint that--even though the vocal hook is "We can go together,"--the flower train won't be bringing you home this time. Man. You dig that?

These dudes look like hippies, they make trippy-hippy music, and their vocals make 'em sound like hippies, but the lyrics...dude, that's pretty dark. Trust not the happy ones, for they can't help you. It looks great out there, but therein lies your doom. It's all illusion. They're all out to get you. They're the pod people, the Stepford community, the body snatchers--everything you know is wrong, everything is a lie, so don't go there, don't go into the light, 'cause once you're there baby, there's no way back, not no more, not ever. Just listen to me, baby, 'cause I'm the only friend you've got. I'll talk you through this, but you've got to listen to me, only me, and I'll bring you home, but don't trust anything else, 'cause it's all death, baby, it's all death.

All implications considered (as like Cher sang, we all sleep alone), the Mountain's message here is as far from retro-hippidom as it can get, and it's a prescient one, that's as frightening as it is reassuring. Listen--alone...with the headphones on--at your own risk.