psychedelic rock
All posts tagged psychedelic rock
I wrote a review for psych-ambient group Woodsman’s new self-titled, released day before yesterday.
“. . . I had the impression of beginning in the woods and ending up elsewhere, a good sign for a psychedelic recording. It reminds me of a fantasy series, Roger Zelazny’s The Chronicles of Amber, in which the main character arrives on other planes by walking and simultaneously imagining the destination piece by piece, subtracting elements that don’t fit, thus shifting the landscape around him until he has arrived at the place he’d envisioned. It’s a good model for how each track tends to progress – movement in pieces, like clay being shaped.”
Check out the full review here.
“A melodic focus would be hard to pinpoint, as everything else drifts in and out, creating a cloud of sound in which the movement is slow but constant and all elements are dialed way down. After all this painstaking distillation, what you have is an extremely atmospheric, rhythm-based album, one whose experiments bring it to the border of alternative R&B and ambient psychedelia.”
Full review here.
NEW WARPAINT, it’s new Warpaint. I like Warpaint.
But to be even more descriptive, “Biggy” is a much more laidback Warpaint track than I’m used to. No solos or jams – the guitars are kept to a misty sparkle, the percussion is sparse in its footfalls, and it cruises mostly on the ethereal side to their vocal repertoire. Album out 1/21 so excite so excite.
On repeat 30+min.
I don’t know why it took me so long to check out Tame Impala; I get recommendations for them left and right, and they’re just the dish for my current psychedelic cravings, and they do it so well. Their drummer is phenomenal – I haven’t heard such catchy fills in a while. I don’t think I’ve even used the phrase ‘catchy fills’ in a while. They mostly avoid rehashing the genre, and definitely have their own say as to what that sound can do – y’know, beyond tubular flanger effects and stuff like that. It’s a very lean, economic psych album, a rare thing. Doesn’t put all its acid tabs in one basket. It microblots.
This is definitely one of my favorite tracks off Lonerism. The incessant drumbeats embody the collective maddening pressures just wanting to shit all over your face, all the time, and I swear I’ve used this mantra at some point, “gottabeaboveit, gottabeaboveit.”
The vocals are lovely too. It’s not really whiny, it’s real – that’s how much anyone would whine when the face-shitters are all around. At least that’s how I deal – inside, I curl into a ball of sad, allow myself a single tear, and then system wipe my attitude to make way for a Maori warpaint-face, with the tongue out and everything. “Be Above It” is the precise sound for this process.
by god, that chorus is unstoppable D8
like a skinny hulk on the grass in spandex
look for their debut next year, February 11th
“I. KNOW A MOUSE. And He Hasn’t Got A House
i don’t know why I call him Gerald.”
hey, My brother’s name is Gerald
John Dwyer and that beautiful translucent gibson *0*
The debut of Floating Coffin earlier this year has equipped Thee Oh Sees with the perfect bookends for a show. Excuse me as I wax even more superlative: there is no set-closer more bittersweet than “Minotaur”, and certainly no set-opener more rousing today than the one-two punch of “I Come From the Mountain” followed by “Toe Cutter-Thumb Buster”; it hits like a landslide, the riffs simply pour and pour, punctuated by John Dwyer’s masterful yelps.
Read the full review here!
Here’s still dreaming about Thee Oh Sees @ Eagle Rock Center for the Arts last Thursday. What was it like? 75 minutes of vertigo, while Porky Pig makes a buzzing sound in your ear with nary a stutter. Expect a writeup soon.
leather green gargoyle 