Big Business: Mind The Drift

Big Business bassist Jared Warren and drummer Coady Willis churn up the tonal equivalent of an oil spill, and write songs too violently catchy for the usual “sludge” and “stoner-rock” tags. Their bleak, queasy third album, Mind The Drift, tries to look beyond the euphoric whiplash of 2005’s Head For The Shallow and 2007’s Here Come The Waterworks, keeping the dense lows while guitarist Toshi Kasai adds squiggly underpinnings and melodic leads. If only the guitar tone sounded less thin and distant, and if only the guitar parts felt as resourceful as Big Business’ bass and drums always do. The album’s best extra instrument might actually be the trilling, high piano on “The Ayes Have It.” Even so, this (slightly) new direction is a fitting complement for the smart-assed menace that made the band such fun in the first place. (“Please don’t water me down,” Warren howls on the chorus of the nearly nine-minute album-closer “The Theme From Big Business II.”) At times, that results in songs that rank among the group’s best, especially as it groans and lurches through “Gold And Final” and “Cold Lunch.”