Sometimes, when you’re bogged down in the day-to-day grind of terrestrial life, sipping a Starbucks coffee and idling in traffic, it’s easy to forget that we’re all just standing on a tiny fleck of rock floating aimlessly through an incomprehensibly vast cosmic void.
Which is why it’s good to keep a few Om records around. When it comes to invoking thoughts of the infinite, the California-based bass-and-drums duo is second only to Carl Sagan.
In part, this is because Om‘s songs are really long. At 19-minutes, “Thebes,” which opens the band’s just released third LP, God is Good, is so epic that it to puts most takes of “Dark Star” to shame. But some credit should also be given to bassist/vocalist Al Cisneros—stoner-rock’s answer to Alice Coltrane. His devotional chanting and endlessly unspooling low-end elevate Om’s music beyond the realm of mere fuzzy-headed riffage and into the realm of sensual, spiritual thinking.
Om w/ Six Organs of Admittance, Lichens
@ DC9
1940 9th Street, NW
9 p.m. $14