Colour Haze - She Said (2012, 2CD)

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Colour Haze - She Said (2012, 2CD)

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Over four years since All (2008) and two years since recording started, it’s hard to believe that She Said, the new album by stoner/heavy psych masters Colour Haze is here! It’s been a long, gnarly road for the band to get to its completion. Original plans was for a February 2011 release, until a January press release revealed that there were defects in the recordings and they would have to re-record most of the album.

We had to wait a long time. Four years. As long as never before in the history of Colour Haze. Again and again there were problems in the completion of the new album. To list all of them here would become prohibitive. But what counts is not the time, we had to wait, but the one, we listen to the music. If you take a look at the extreme running time alone, the wait seems to be worth it. We get about 80 minutes of material. A record which you don’t not know where to start, let alone to describe with simple words. Okay, we all have consumed Transformation already dozens of times and have closed it in our hearts as a classic of course.

A similarly long period (nearly 20 minutes), is featured by the title track, which also serves as the opener. She Said begins quietly. Very quietly. Slowly summing and guitar playing of Stefan and Philipp’s Bass, foregather with a piano and Manfred’s sporadic beats. As if they would meet here again after years of hiatus. The pent-up energy now seems to be discharged in several bursts. With the beginning of Stefan’s vocal inevitably a smile shines on our faces. Once, in the usual Colour Haze-style the song seems to be driven completely alone by it’s own energy, you forget not only the musicians behind the instruments, but also, that this is just the first song of the record. This one alone already needs several listens to get the song in all it’s facets.

You see, it figuratively swarms with additional instruments on this album! Several electromechanical pianos, synthesizers and a grand piano we find in the key department. Congas and chimes in the percussion department. Horns, trumpet and trombone as wind instruments. And in addition to the backing vocals, the strings must also not be forgotten. Madness.
90So the melodic, guitar-heavy, impregnated by a warm natural gravity Sound is expanded on almost every corner. She Said could have ended up as a big construction site, instead the album breathes like a growing, pulsating organism that wants to unfold in all directions. The rhythm section alternates between euphoric driving forward and skillfully holding together.

The eight songs are not divided by direct breaks, but joined together by ambient sounds to create a great whole. The shorter fraction is covered by the two-minute organ-rocker This and Slowdown, in which Stefan gets support by female vocals. Some may have found the essence of the sound of Colour Haze in previous albums already. Because, although there are a lot of experiments here, we don’t discover any real queer fellows, but much more variations of the direction in which the sound of the Munichs developed to in the last few years.

Songs such as Stand In… and Rite, include less of the variety of instruments, and seem to be related much more likely to Tempel or All, which probably makes them also the easiest ones to perform on stage without any additional live musicians. Grace on the other hand ends with an almost orchestral instrumentation and gives the Opus an epic finale. After a nearly twenty-year history of the band, Colour Haze have proved once more that you can go forward. That you must not tread water. That things are worth waiting for.

Only one thing should be clear: So much time, effort and love that was put in the album, is required to the same extent by the listener. Who listens attentively gets rewarded. With such an album in the record collection a further four-year wait seems not so bad. We still hope it does not take that long once more.

~ 9/10, www.stonerrock.eu