Two of rock's great eccentrics have a meeting of the minds on this album, which finds
Sonic Boom (aka
Spectrum, and known to his mom as
Pete Kember), the trance-rock acid evangelist of
Spacemen 3 and
Experimental Audio Research, sharing the studio with
Jim Dickinson (here trading as
Captain Memphis), who helped
Alex Chilton craft
Big Star's damaged masterwork
Third/Sister Lovers and has worked with everyone from
Ry Cooder and
the Rolling Stones to
the Replacements and
the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. While most of the musicians on
Indian Giver are Memphis cats who have a history with
Dickinson,
Randall Nieman of
Füxa serves as
Sonic Boom's right-hand man here on guitar and keyboards, and he helps keep the approach of the album balanced. The songs have a deep, trippy feel with plenty of the droning textures and overdriven guitars
Kember is famous for, but
Dickinson and his pals help give the performances a solidly organic groove that speaks of the Deep South, complete with spooky found noises and crickets chirping in the background, and
Dickinson's recitations on "The Lonesome Death of Johnny Ace," "Til Your Mainline Comes," and "The Old Cow Died" sound like an inspired fusion of
Nick Tosches and James Ellroy gone beatnik. (
Kember is a better singer, but he isn't half as good a storyteller.)
Sonic Boom and
Dickinson seem to be having fun tossing these songs back and forth as Southern gothic comes face to face with ecstatic noise, and they bring out fine ideas in one another; this is a Dixie-fried freakout that's appropriately laid-back but emphatic for fans of the right sort of madness.