Photo: Warren Rodricks
There’s a long list of things that distinguish local psych rock outfit Earth Tongue from their peers. They’re a duo, for one, but generate enough noise to fill several stadiums. Musically they draw on doom or stoner metal, but offset it with tuneful vocals, sung by both members.
But the main thing might be their dedication to a certain type of myth-making that wends its way through their songs, drawing on horror movie paradigms, delivered with a hint of irony, but mostly played straight.
One run of lyrics in ‘Bodies Dissolve Tonight’ goes “A pale woman watches over/ Your overgrown winter garden/ She sits in silence/ Eyes glazed over/ With red blood dripping from her finger”.
That’s a lot of visual information conveyed in words, so it’s maybe not surprising that Ezra Simons and Gussie Larkin have both spent time as directors. They’ve co-helmed a few videos for the band, including ‘Miraculous Death’, which sees Simons as a psychotic gardener at a stately manor where Larkin is staying as a guest.
The clip is steeped in Giallo signifiers - that’s the genre of Italian horror films which had its heyday in the seventies - like lit candles, sacrificial daggers, and ominous garden statues. Even the colour palette feels right, as does the sight of Larkin as a wide-eyed woman in era-appropriate makeup.
There are musical nods to this influence on the album as well. In fact the first track, ‘Out of This Hell’, begins with the kind of synth arrangement that might kick off a typical Giallo, before the band’s signature sludge guitars take over.
The pair didn’t direct the video for that song, but it’s full of their usual concerns, starting with the crackle of analogue film, and visuals like candle smoke superimposed over Larkin’s face, and later a horned silhouette.
It could almost come as a shock to see what the band look like: far from being draped in goth aesthetic, Larkin favours brightly coloured boutique dresses, and Simons is a t-shirt and shorts kind of guy.
It’s one aspect that drops the horror movie facade, and suggests that all the allusions to zombies and the devil are more for fun than anything else.
The kind of riff-heavy music Earth Tongue make brings to mind Kyuss and Fu Manchu from my (admittedly limited) reference points, and the mammoth slabs of noise generated by California band Sleep, or New Zealand’s Beastwars. Larkin and Simons cite Black Sabbath, which makes sense.
They were taken on tour recently by American fuzz-merchant Ty Segall, after he was impressed by their support slots in NZ. It’s easy to say why: the vision that runs through their output, musically and visually, feels complete, and compelling.
