Style: Math rock, psychedelic rock, progressive rock (instrumental, rap on track 7)
Recommended for fans of: Chon, late Elder, Motorpsycho
Country: Canada
Release date: 7 February 2025
One of the coolest things about classic Westerns of old was the quick draw duels. After a heated dispute, Serious Badass no. 1 and Serious Badass no. 2 would stand back to back, and walk ten paces before shooting each other, usually captured with some epic closeup face cams right before they put their manhood into action. A classic element which made these duels so iconic was the small gust of wind that rolled a piece of tumbleweed by, expertly building the tension. Now, Sweden’s climate does not lend itself to this plant, but if you are a Serious Badass in Sweden facing another who insulted your honor, you are in luck because Tumbleweed Dealer are here for all your quickdraw decorum needs.
On latest album Dark Green, Tumbleweed Dealer’s sound is centered around light math rock riffs and drummer Angelo Fata’s diverse array of grooves, spiced up by interjecting that musical base with post-rock strumming, progressive rhythms, psychedelic sound effects, and a wide variety of keyboard and brass instruments mostly done by guest musicians. These elements are molded into a free-flowing jam band type of sound, and Tumbleweed Dealer compose their songs around a central groove which they use as a baseline to fall back on for their experimental tangents, making them very easy to listen to. Every song will throw in a couple of cute and/or quirky ideas that you can latch onto: Tumbleweed Dealer treat us to mellotron, Hammond organ, church organ, trumpet, flugelhorn, 90s video game synths, and a few more unconventional rock instruments and sounds atop their math rock foundation, yielding an at least outwardly diverse album.
Angelo Fata steals the show with his performance behind the kit on Dark Green, displaying both versatility and depth in his rhythms. He constantly intersperses his grooves with creative accents and small fills without ever detracting from the underlying groove, and he transitions cleverly between rhythms through more extensive fills. Seb Painchaud’s guitar work on the other hand is far less interesting: he spends much of his time in quirky strumming patterns that are fun for a while but lack the edge to carry an entire album. It’s not until “Dragged Across the Wetlands” that we get something of higher intensity from him and it makes a huge difference for the track’s memorability. Similarly, “Ghost Dressed in Weeds” with its energetic surf rock and “Body of the Bog” with its heavy machine gun riff immediately stand out from the pack for the guitar’s extra edge. Finally, Jean-Baptiste Joubaud provides similarly quirky sounds on synths when playing lead, often drawing from 90s video game music, and lays down a cosy, psychedelic atmospheric backdrop for the rest of the album. Nothing too crazy but his playing works well enough and provides some nice color to Tumbleweed Dealer’s overall sound.
The aforementioned jam band sensibility that defines Dark Green plays a large part in what makes Tumbleweed Dealer’s sound so accessible, but it’s also their biggest weakness. Rarely do the songs on Dark Green develop into anything more compelling than the base ideas they started with. More often than not they will introduce a cute motif, maybe even a couple of them, bounce around between a few other quirky passages, return to the main riff and end the song in an anticlimactic way. What makes other jam-esque prog bands like Elder and Motorpsycho so compelling is how they build from a simple motif into these larger than life climaxes; Tumbleweed Dealer’s compositions are just tepid in comparison. When they do build up the tension, they fail to provide proper release, yet simultaneously, the often meek guitar work makes the tracks impotent in terms of hooks, so the overall result is something that sits awkwardly between a straightforward and an epic composing style. In that sense, the large cast of guest musicians tends to feel like window dressing, even if performed well. Remarkably enough, the best guest feature is Ceschi Ramos whose rapping on “Ghost Dressed in Weeds” gives some much-needed edge to the music. The small saxophone solo by Zach Strouse on the title track is also phenomenal, as is the Latin part it transitions into afterwards—but then the song just ends without any sense of ceremony, squandering the greater moments that came before.
If you’re all about chill vibes and want something easy to listen to, Dark Green has plenty to offer with all the different keyboard textures and psychedelic sounds thrown at you atop a comfortable math rock base. Otherwise though, Tumbleweed Dealer are neither incisive enough to make the short compositions catchy nor ambitious enough to develop their songs into epic proportions, leaving an album that is varied on the surface, but meek and homogeneous on the inside. As it stands, Serious Badasses in Sweden would do better to forego the Tumbleweed Dealer and stick with regular Swedish dueling decorum.
Recommended tracks: A Plant That Thinks It’s Human, Dragged Across the Wetlands, Ghost Dressed in Weeds
You may also like: delving, Bend the Future, Ferras Arrabi
Final verdict: 5/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook
Label: Independent
Tumbleweed Dealer is:
– Seb Painchaud (bass, guitars)
– Angelo Fata (drums, percussion)
– Jean-Baptiste Joubaud (synths, programming)
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