Brant Bjork – Mankind Woman album review

Forming the defining desert rock band of our generation has left Brant Bjork with an unshakeable association and, some might say, a lot to live up to. 

Echoing jams from Kyuss on his first solo outing, Jalamanta, put the double-B on the right foot and, via albums of desert-spangled acoustic, poppish tunes, whacked-out mantras and desert rockin’, the somewhat mixed bag that is Brant Bjork has always been fundamentally a hippie ride. Which leads us to Mankind Woman. 

After a smattering of guitar-driven offerings on Napalm Records Bjork’s latest has gone full-on retro and daresay the sort of stuff an older generation would like. His Steppenwolf-era flashbacks are visceral on Nation Of Indica and groovy on Chocolatize, and, where Pisces sounds like an open letter of emotional torment, the lightly thumping blues journey of Pretty Hairy is effortlessly cool.