Hans Chew Land of Dreams

Land of Dreams is the fifth album from Hans Chew (Jack Rose, Steve Gunn, Hiss Golden Messenger, Endless Boogie, et al), featuring Dan Brown, Steve Daly and David Shuford. The Land of Dreams: proverbial hopes and aspirations; yet also the nether realm of nightmares, fantasies, and subconscious voyages. Which dreams? A title oft-thrust onto the New World, but whose land? Perhaps more apt to Chew: whose America(na)? Driving opener “Dying On Borrowed Time” seems inspired by both Ajahn Chah’s “In the Dead of Night…” and a mysterious guest; hot-wired hybrid of post-Traffic-era Dave Mason, ’70s Tulsa sound, 12-string Eastern melodies and propulsive bass. The Faulkernian menace of “The Peddler’s Cart” drags patricidal-Gothic through fallow cotton fields; Daly’s mandolin cutting peals of Bill Monroe-like energy; murder-ballad revenge via Fairport Convention, Waylon, and The Bad Seeds. Invoked from the same greasy-yet-ethereal grimoire of Leon Russell piano magick (that Chew regularly casts), “She’s a Seer” recalls Russell’s work with Delaney & Bonnie; snatches of 1975-era Zeppelin in Daly’s pedal steel-like swells and stinging outro solo; Brown’s bass splits The Meters and T. Rex. “Land of Dreams” is a fantastical nonlinear U.S. historical travelogue: a flag is planted on the moon; Adam Smith’s hand creeps westward doling poxed blankets to native peoples; the internet foists its mirror in our faces; Mississippi riverboats slouch towards New Orleans. “Something’s coming in the Land of Dreams”, indeed. Barrel-house piano, electric slide and frantic bass smack out a frenzied crescendo in a midway Hall of Mirrors, all fading into Nod. “Theatre of Dionysus” finds Chew in a Roman fever dream à la P.K. Dick’s VALIS: “they’ll eat out your liver again and it regrows.” Shuford’s bouzouki flourishes punctuate the lyrical breaks, his electrified take during the outro providing arguably the most beautiful texture of the album.