Some bands reunite because they want to rehash past glories or re-create a sound that had earned them an audience in the past.
The Dream Syndicate clearly have a different agenda.
Steve Wynn put together a new edition of his groundbreaking paisley underground outfit in 2012, and on-stage they've shown they're more than capable of summoning the fire of the band's glory days in the '80s. However, in the studio, the 21st century
Dream Syndicate have revealed a different personality, cooler and more open to sonic exploration, though just as literate and daring as ever. If 2017's
How Did I Find Myself Here? and 2019's
These Times were the work of a group unwilling to be chained to their past, 2020's
The Universe Inside represents a clean break.
The Universe Inside opens with "The Regulator," a 20-minute track that features plenty of guitar cross talk between
Wynn and
Jason Victor, who has certainly lived up to the band's legacy of great lead guitarists, but this isn't a guitar jam. Beginning with a lo-fi drum machine pattern augmented by
Dennis Duck's live traps and
Mark Walton's rich bass, the song is a journey through musical inner space pitched somewhere between psychedelia and jazz, trippy yet with a clear sense of purpose as it sails into the unknown with the assistance of
Marcus Tenney's sax,
Chris Cacavas' electric piano, and
Stephen McCarthy's sitar (yep, you read that right, sitar).
How Did I Find Myself Here? and
These Times may have flirted with psychedelia, but on
The Universe Inside, the Dream Syndicate and psych are done flirting and they've gotten a room for the night. The result is their bravest and most idiosyncratic music to date. "The Regulator" is the lengthiest track here, though the shortest still weighs in at a hefty 7:37, and the taut songwriting and pithy lyrics that have usually held their performances in place have been set aside, at least temporarily, in favor of frameworks that allow the band to jam with the zeal of "John Coltrane Stereo Blues" or "The Days of Wine and Roses," but with an approach that makes room for a broad palette of sounds instead of just two guitars squaring off. While this music is a long way off from the Dream Syndicate's roots, it's smart and visionary music built out of jamming that avoids being lazy or poorly focused. The group's first two post-reunion albums were fine and deeply satisfying, but
The Universe Inside goes someplace most fans would never have expected. It's bold, challenging, and dreamlike stuff that stakes out new territory for the band and unexpectedly succeeds on the level of their best work.