***REISSUED!!! Bardo Pond's 1995 debut album, taking its name from the official Latin for a hallucinogenic toad indigenous to the Western United States. That's a fairly appropriate association to make with the band's severely zoned-out stoner-psych sound, something pioneered on this album, a record that brought the band to the attention of Matador Records who snapped them up for their next album. Amongst all the fuzz-soaked weirdness of the instrumentation on these early recordings there's a defined sense of actual songs being present with loosened up blues rock numbers like 'Back Porch' rubbing up against the coarse melodies of 'Capillary River', sounding like a solo-free Dinosaur Jr. recording with an extra helping of Big Muff caked on for good measure. The album culminates in a half-hour jam, ushered in by spooked-up church bell recordings and acres of droning guitar distortion, closing down a glistening piece of weird Americana. Recommended.