psychedelia
Kieron Tyler
Musically, the assured Focus on Nature knows exactly what it is. Fuzzy, psychedelic-leaning, folk-aware pop-rock with an emphasis on guitars about captures it. And what tunes – this 75-minute double album’s 19 songs are immediate, instantly memorable and stick, limpet-like, in the head. Even during “A Mirror’s” backwards guitar coda the song’s melody is still to the fore.Lyrically, The Bevis Frond’s new album draws from main-man Nick Saloman’s concerns about where the world is – and shouldn’t be – heading, “I’m so tired of scary ecological forecasts” are the blunt opening words. The song, “ Read more ...
Joe Muggs
It must be kind of unreal living in the Stereolab universe.A band of geeky introverts, beloved of the type of hairclip-and-satchel indie ultras a friend of mine used to call “the Scooby Gang” for their tendency to resemble Shaggy and Velma, over the past three decades they also became cool enough in fashion and celebrity circles to get multiple mentions in Bret Easton Ellis’s Glamorama, and etched into the very fabric of hip hop via fans like The Neptunes, J Dilla, Timbaland and Tyler, The Creator. Laetitia Sadier, one of the two sole continuous members of Stereolab along with Tim Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The dolefulness of the title Loss of Life is reflected by what’s in the grooves. The lyrics of the Todd Rundgren/Queen-esque fifth track “Bubblegum Dog” include the line “None of this seems like fun but maybe that’s the point, man.” Further in, “Nothing Changes” seems to be about wanting to be rescued from an enervating stasis.Such melancholy is accompanied by an archness. With its key line “nothing prepares you for loss of life,” it is not possible to take woozy album closer “Loss of Life “ as a po-faced rumination on ceasing to exist. A Day-Glo sense of absurdity is in-keeping with the Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Floridian-born, longtime Brooklyn resident, now Asheville, North Carolina based Roberto Carlos Lange doesn’t rush things, but he gets them done. This is his ninth album in 15 years, during which time he’s built a substantial body of audiovisual / computer art / installation work too. And as with all this creative endeavour, it’s not showy, it doesn’t demand your attention, but it spreads out its ideas and emotions very much at its own pace.His relocation to Asheville came after the Covid lockdown experience in New York – which explicitly inspired 2021’s Far In – and it’s easy to hear a Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Back in 2013, fuzz-heavy space cadets the Telescopes headed off to Berlin and then back to Leeds to record an album of intoxicating tunes that were written as they were recorded while relying on “the heightened instinct of being entirely in the now”. However, things came to a grinding halt due to a crashed hard-drive and the project was unfortunately abandoned.Ten years later, some long-forgotten back-up recordings of the sessions turned up and the band’s main man Stephen Lawrie decided to dust down and polish up seven of the original tracks of raw and trippy sounds for release as Growing Read more ...
Joe Muggs
It seems like time flows differently for J Mascis. He’s now not far off 60, it’s 40 years since he founded Dinosaur Jr, and he’s been involved in untold musical project from the most rarefied of abstract psychedelia to guesting with Lemonheads and Nirvana, but within his own core output he is tapped into exactly the same wellspring as he was all those years ago.And I mean exactly. His solo material might be mellower than Dinosaur Jr on the whole, but nonetheless, play any of these songs next to more low key early Dinosaur classics like 1985’s “Repulsion” or 1987’s “The Lung” to an unfamiliar Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Halfway through this album, “They Sold My Home to Build a Skyscraper” unlocks it. On first listen I’d been nodding along with the first few songs, enjoying how they find glimmers of more or less forlorn hope in amongst sadness and middle-aged domestic stress.I’d been enjoying, too, how the gentle, even kitsch bossa nova and psyche pop lilt of the arrangements makes them into what I like to think of as “soft music for hard times” (in fact an obsession of mine, see my playlist series now over 130 volumes strong). And then came “...Skyscraper” which pulled all of those elements together, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
As Britain headed towards the end of 1972, pop fans had fair cause to scratch their heads about a single which first charted in July. In mid-August, Hawkwind’s “Silver Machine” peaked at number three behind Terry Dactyl and the Dinosaurs skiffle-esque “Seaside Shuffle” and, in the top spot, Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out.” Donny Osmond’s oleaginous “Puppy Love” was number four. At 11, David Bowie’s “Starman.”Glam had kicked in the previous year and, until “Starman,” T.Rex were its torchbearers. Hawkwind did not fit in. They were not easy on the ear or eye. They were not heavy metal or Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
High Tide were one of many late Sixties and early Seventies British bands unearthed in the early Eighties by record collectors digging into what came after psychedelia. The bands didn’t have similar musical styles but were united by their obscurity and having sold barely any copies of their albums. All were largely forgotten until their rediscovery. Ben, Gracious!, Pussy, Red Dirt, T2, more. Who were these bands? Who were High Tide?As is the way, collector interest and the sharply rising prices of original pressings resulted in digging for information and reissues. High Tide had released two Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
That's What Remained is the aural equivalent of being pulled into a maelstrom and then surrendering to this powerful natural force. Initially, it does not seem safe. But it soon becomes apparent that submission isn’t a problem. It will be fine. Emerging from this experience is accompanied by a shakiness. But that’s OK too.It’s not necessary to know anything about Lucidvox to be knocked for six by That's What Remained, their second album. Over its eight tracks and 33 minutes it effortlessly accommodates the hard edge of shoegazing – the sensibility sustaining My Bloody Valentine’s “You Made me Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
VINYL OF THE MONTH Being Dead When Horses Would Run (Bayonet)Being Dead are ostensibly an indie trio from Austin, Texas, but that description doesn’t really do justice to their smörgåsbord sound. Their default setting seems to be Trashmen “Surfin’ Bird” (just check “Come On”) but they also enjoying fooling around with synths. They’re not easily categorizable. What they are is catchy, whether combining sing-along choruses with flamenco and dream-pop on “Daydream”, or inventing narcotic underwater country’n’western on the mournful, murky and bizarre “Livin’easy”. Three more comparisons (faint) Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“How psychedelic is your pop? This is the demanding question posed to many groups today, struggling for acceptance. It's no longer any good to say: ‘Well, mate, we can play Wilson Pickett, James Brown and all that gear,’ to anybody contemplating booking a band. One has to explain whether one is likely to set fire to the auditorium, or batter the audience’s senses with flame, light and fiendish noises.”When music weekly Melody Maker got to grips with psychedelia in its 14 January 1967 issue, it was noted that Pink Floyd were “originally an R&B blues-type group.” Drummer Nick Mason told the Read more ...