Bassist Mike Watt has always been proud of his roots, with the memory and spirit of his influential trio the Minutemen seeping through nearly everything he’s done in the four decades since his childhood best friend, guitarist, and bandmate D. Boon died in a tragic van accident in 1985. But when he initiated the virtual trio he calls three-layer cake during the first year of the pandemic he insisted on creating a firewall from the legendary group. “Mike [Pride] asked me for words, and I said, if I do that, they’re going to compare us with the Minutemen,” says Watt. He insisted that the new trio find its voice without his words so people didn’t assume it was another Watt and guests project.

Those instincts demanded the new trio’s 2021 debut album Stove Top be taken on its own terms, a gritty, style-hopping collision of weird funk, prog-rock flourishes, no wave, free jazz, and more. Despite the fact that each musician created their largely improvised contributions separately—with drummer Mike Pride tracking the first layer on his own, Watt putting down his heavy bass parts atop that clatter, and guitarist/banjoist Brandon Seabrook finally making the final contribution, each from their own home studios—the music felt seriously organic and lived in. It shouldn’t be overlooked that Watt engaged in a similar methodology with his old bass duo Dos, with Kira Roessler, which traded taped parts by mail in a pre-digital age. In the end, three-layer cake had, indeed, carved out its own thing.

“Chapter two was trippy,” explains Watt, referring to the group’s powerful new sophomore album sounds the color of grounds, and noting that the trio’s firm identity allowed him to draw upon his past without fear of exploiting it. The day that Pride sent Watt his new drum parts happened to be April 1—D. Boon’s birthday. Watt recorded everything on that day, energized by the spirit of his old friend while digging into the grooves of a newer one that he’d first met when Pride was a guest on his long-running podcast, “The Watt From Pedro Show,” in 2018. “I just imagined [Mike] was there and I played to him, in the moment.” Watt also felt at ease adding vocals to the three of the tracks, “semi-sonnets” he’d written for another old pal from his SST days, the visual artist Raymond Pettibon. “The fucking sonnet form is rough, with the ten syllables, the fourteen lines, the three quatrains, and a couplet,” says Watt. “This way I can do what Mike asked me to do, and it ain’t gonna be the fucking Minutemen, it’s going to be for a guy I love.” Watt, a student of D.I.Y. art-making over the ages, notes that Walt Whitman’s classic poetry collection Leaves of Grass was originally self-published in 1855, a proto-punk move that defines everything the musician does.

sounds the color of grounds marks a quantum leap from the debut record, with each musician feeling more comfortable and eager to experiment. While improvisation and spontaneity remain paramount, Pride and Seabrook felt free to use the studio more, honing some parts over time and recordings some overdubs once all of them had baked their individual cakes, so to speak. “My mind is always blown when I get Brandon’s parts,” says Pride, “and I can never predict what I’m gonna get from Watts’ parts, but it’s always great.” The drummer continues to set the tone, laying down the rhythmic foundation, and for the new record he moves between groove-oriented jams, slow-mo funk, texture-oriented soundscapes, brushes-propelled swing, and even a track-long solo, as on the chattery “Lickspittle Spatter,” where Seabrook’s bowed banjo evokes the Middle Eastern rabab more than a rock instrument. Watt jumped straight into the fray of each track, quickly locating an essence that allowed his muscular lines to both thread Pride’s shape-shifting percussion seamlessly—even when it never repeats—and provide an indelible anchor to each piece. “When I recorded the drum tracks for this record I was able to give it more shape from my first floor level, to be more thoughtful,” says the drummer.

“The foundation is so strong when Pride and Watt send me their stuff,” says Seabrook. “It’s so easy, I can play anything over it and it will sound great. But we had an idea to make these a little more song-like, or a little more concise in terms of the statement of each piece. I would improvise along to them, but I would then take bits of those and make parts for the songs, thinking more compositionally.” So as much as Pride creates an initial vibe, Seabrook’s blend of guitar and banjo dramatically changes the complexion. His lightning-fast banjo picking on the opening track led him to fashion its witty portmanteau “Deliverdance,” with terse notes piling up so fast they appear to be single vibrato-laden tone, while on “The Hasta Cloth” he invokes the overdriven sound of guitarist Sonny Sharrock before hitting a chorus that suggests some phantom strain of new wave prog-funk. There’s a hep swing feel to the breezy “Occluded Ostracized and Onanistic,” which gains additional buoyancy thanks to Pride’s overdubbed tuned percussion. Seabrook and Pride traded ideas on the mix and overdubs, but it’s the latter that nailed down the final details in the studio.

“He’s almost the fourth member, being the knob man,” says Watt. “At the end of the day I was feeling like the clay provider. Look at that fucking bowl this guy threw on the wheel using my clay!” Watt has been increasingly involved in improv-oriented trios in recent years, including a group with his old pal Joe Baiza on guitar and Chris Corsano on drums, to say nothing of the tune-oriented mssv with jazz guitarist Mike Bagetta and drummer Stephen Hodges. But three-layer cake combines the best of all worlds, building from improvisation while simultaneously embracing songcraft in how the three layers come together and get frosted by Pride. Astonishingly, Watt has yet to meet Seabrook and Pride in the flesh, a fact belied by the remarkable cohesion and shared vision spilling from sounds the color of grounds. And this fall the trio will finally convene in the flesh at Pride’s studio in Chester, New York, to make its third album.

Tracklist:
1 Deliverdance (4:32)
2 From Couplets To Corpuscles (4:06)
3 The Hasta Cloth (2:23)
4 What Was Cut From The Negative Space (5:03)
5 Occluded Ostracized And Onanistic (2:28)
6 The Part You Kept Art (3:36)
7 Tchotchkes (3:14)
8 The Lonely Sail (featuring Jonathan Moritz) (5:06)
9 Lickspittle Spatter (5:04)

Credits:
Mike Pride – drumset, marimba, glockenspiel, dumbeks, bongos, organ, double bull-roarer
Brandon Seabrook – guitars, banjos, tapes
Mike Watt – bass, vocal

• Jonathan Moritz – tenor saxophone on “The Lonely Sail””