White Manna

White Manna plays space rock using a scorched-earth policy. The Arcata, California, quartet may telegraph where they’re coming from and where they’re going to take you with their track titles, but knowing the itinerary doesn’t dampen the thrill of their excursion into stellar depths.

Opening track “Acid Head” is not false advertising. It begins with an amiable boogie-rock amble before tumescing into stentorian, Loop-like riffing. You know that you can count on White Manna enveloping your head in the Asheton brothers’ genius string thuggery and convulsing you with the primordial throb harnessed by the Stooges (and, later, Hawkwind), before sonic irony was invented.