Going Down To The River…To Blow My Mind

If youre a gifted ranter and you want to make an album, it helps to have a friend who can make those rants easier to listen to, and in that respect Luke Haines is lucky to have a pal and collaborator like Peter Buck. Buck was Haines musical collaborator on 2020s Beat Poetry for Survivalists and 2022s All The Kids Are Super Bummed Out, in which the onetime member of the Auteurs and Black Box Recorder delivered his surreal and darkly witty verses over music created by former R.E.M. guitarist Buck, and Buck helped make material that might have sounded too self-consciously arty in other contexts into wicked, nervy fun with the help of his frequent studio helpmates Scott McCaughey and Linda Pitmon. Haines and Buck have rounded out what the former calls their "Psychiatric Trilogy" with 2025s Going Down to the River … To Blow My Mind, which doesnt fall very far from the tree of their previous work together. That said, there is something to be said for the notion of the third time being the charm, and Going Down to the River … feels like the most purely enjoyable LP that Haines and Buck have recorded together. All The Kids Are Super Bummed Out felt a bit overstuffed at 67 minutes, and Going Down to the River … wisely keeps things more concise, with its thirteen tracks clocking in at a more efficient 41 minutes. And Beat Poetry for Survivalists sometimes sounded like the product of two gifted minds getting used to working together; theyve clearly developed a more effective working relationship, and Going Down to the River … matches form and content very well, with Bucks psychedelic garage experimentalism making for a most satisfying counterpart to Haines lyrics. It also helps that Buck, McCaughey, and Pitmon have spent enough time together that theyve matured into a first-rate studio band, hitting their marks with easy authority and appearing to have plenty of fun doing it, and former Mott the Hoople keyboard man Morgan Fisher adds some lovely piano fills to the project. If Luke Haines is a cynic of the first order, hes smart, witty, and adds just enough humanity to make the medicine go down as he shakes his head at the abuses of 21st century culture and a variety of forms of commonplace madness. With Buck, hes making some of the most entertaining work of his long career, and Going Down To The River … To Blow My Mind works well enough that one hopes theyll change their minds about this being the end of their trilogy. ~ Mark Deming