We last heard from C.J. Boyd on 2009's stellar "Aerial Roots". Well, 647 shows later he is back with the wildly ambitious "West Coasting Vol. 1 - Dreams Like This Must Die (Seattle circa 91)".

 

'West Coasting' is C.J. Boyd's attempt at a grunge era "covers album", re-worked and scrambled into two 20-minute atmospheric movements. An homage to the influential music of his adolescence (as evidenced by the front cover high school photo of C.J. wearing a Pearl Jam shirt), C.J. Boyd has created a meditative, atmospheric rendering of '91-era Seattle. Songs slowly build from singular, meditative bass lines into explosive, layered, and hugely complex walls of sound - only to realize "wait, is that "temple of the dog?!?!".