Los Angeles’ Gun Outfit take the long, geological, deep-time view. Their online bio starts 2001: A Space Odyssey-style, with the dawning of human history and goes all mystic from there, with a mix of Terence McKenna, Joseph Campbell and Walter Benjamin. They’re orienting themselves in something a little older than the most recent ripple of pop culture. And they’re concerned with more than just tunes. Maybe it’s the arid distant butte seen against a blue sky on the cover, but Out of Range feels like a record of the sun-blasted desert. It’s music that’s spiritually off the grid, as if the band—sometimes a duo, sometimes a trio, sometimes more, once from Olympia, Wash., now out of California—were riding out the world in a sandy hut, sifting through the history of American music. At various points, they echo the mystic poetry of artists like Silver Jews, Bill Callahan, Waylon Jennings, Meat Puppets and even the Grateful Dead, while reading philosophy and shamanic literature. (They’ve aptly called their sound “Western expanse.”) The record opens with a song called “Ontological Intercourse,” which gives you a good sense of where they’re coming from—the exploration of being is part of their scope. One could cherrypick piles of choice lyrics from every song. “So confused at the beginning/ I’ve grown accustomed toward the end/ There’s a mountain in the middle/ Where do you think I’ve been?” goes a line on “Strange Insistence.” And “I tried to quit/ ‘Fore I quit again/ But I guess I’m really best at giving in.” Or “Speed makes you a genius/ Cocaine will make you rich/ LSD shows you divinity/ Everything’s all right on opiates.” If you value lyrical smarts, Gun Outfit is a band to commune with at length. There’s a brittle distinctness to the sound, as if everything was recorded through a Fender Twin Reverb amp, giving it a brightness and slightly warped twinkle. Gun Outfit have staked out that weird place where clarity becomes psychedelic.