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Winter Psych Rundown

January 31, 2020 by A.S. Van Dorston

Winter psych rundown sounds like a serious variation of S.A.D. (seasonal affective disorder). Dr. Fester doesn’t have a prescription for that, but I can at least offer a little color and light during this grey, bleak winter. Despite obsessively chasing down all the psych pop albums throughout 2019, there were a few I didn’t find until after completing Fester’s Lucky 13 Year-End Summary. For example, both The Fast Camels and The Greek Theatre didn’t release their albums until December 6, with no availability on Bandcamp nor Spotify. It’s as if they were trying to sneak a release without anyone noticing. I eventually flushed the rascals out among others, and also preview some upcoming releases from Tame Impala, Elephant Stone and others.

The Fast Camels – Full Of Strange (Magic Optician)

On their fourth album since 2007 debut Magic Optician, this Glasgow band nails their best effort yet, expanding their psych power pop rooted in Medway scene freakbeat by adding progressive elements, along with the lusher side of US West Coast psych pop like Love. “The Wedding” fuses those influences with Ghost, particularly in the multi-tracked vocal melodies.

The jangling guitars on “Storyteller” and the vocals on “Misty” actually bring to mind mid-80s R.E.M. with added Paisley Underground colors. The Who-like crunch of “Don’t Know Where To Begin” and quirky early Canterbury psych of “Family Tree” are a reminder that the band’s hearts don’t stray far from the original psychedelic era.

“The Curious Tale Of Peeping John Foley” offers up an ethereal folky respite before returning to blazing, fuzz guitar driven “Honeymoon.” The album closes with the moody, sprawling “Statue On The Hill” that would do early Crazy Horse era Neil Young proud.

While there’s much to like on Deadrooms and Butterfly Dreams (2014) and Tales of the Expected (2016), Full Of Strange sees the band reaching new consistent heights, with not a single dud in the batch. After each of my dozen plus listening sessions, I walk away with a different favorite echoing in my brain. Sandwiched between the memorable garage rockers “Blissful Serenity” and the title track is the shimmering “Caught In A Dream,” which threatens the haunt my sleep. | Buy

The Greek Theatre – When Seasons Change (Sugarbush)

Sweden’s The Greek Theatre has established over the course of three albums a really cool hybrid of 1968-72 UFO era British psych prog with the folk and vocal harmonies of Cosmic Americana-era Byrds. While Lost Out At Sea (2013) and Broken Circle (2017) are highly recommended folky psych pop with gentle acoustic textures, the new album offers more diversity in moods and dynamics. Given their background, it’s unsurprising that it was released only on vinyl, only becoming available digitally over a month later on January 26.

The sunny, hooky folk pop of “Laurence Of Laurel Canyon” transitions to the dark, fuzz-drenched instrumental “The Post-Factual Jam.” “Old Jawbone” is augmented by classy strings, flute and harp. The heaviest track sits in the middle of the album, the 8:23 “Bible Black Mare.” The sprawling, bleak epic features languid guitar solos that cry of loneliness, the atmosphere sweetened by smooth vocal melodies.

“The Streets You Hold” has a more wistful, romantic feel that really ought to steer indie folk fans away from the likes of Bon Iver to something far more fascinating. “A Different Place” has a deceptively simple, mellow groove that brings to mind the more hypnotic multitextured moments of John Martyn until act two, which breaks into a brief Allman Brothers style boogie before reverting to a delicate, elegiac outro. The album cracks a champagne bottle and drifts off with the delicate closer “Sail Away (Part Two).” With any luck, that boat will eventually take them to North America, because people need to see this band in action.

The Bright Light Social Hour – Jude Vol. 1 (Modern Outsider)

Formed in 2004, Austin’s The Bright Light Social Hour burned through several incarnations before hitting their current progressive electro psych pop groove, including post-hardcore, post-rock, and southern boogie blues psych jams on their 2010 album debut. Second album Space Is Still The Place (2015) finds them exploring synths much like Tame Impala at the time. However they arguably sound better than the more popular band thanks to the funky bottom warmth of the bass lines and some exploratory prog. Many of the songs got licensed to a slew of TV shows, leading to the band writing the them for Amazon’s Sneaky Pete.

Jude Vol. I was released after singer/bassist Jackie O’Brien’s brother Alex committed suicide. Songs for Vol. II were recorded at the same time, during winter 2017/18. Since Jude is only 30 minutes long, it’s a mystery why the band is waiting so long to release the rest. While it lacks some of the more adventurous moments of Space, the short album is packed with top notch songs, arrangements and production, and holds up well under repeated plays. While I’m not a big fan of psych bands ditching their guitars, there’s still enough hands on strings ‘n’ sticks throughout to balance the smoove synth textures. I’m surprised the album didn’t make a bigger splash, but it goes to show how much dissonance bands have to overcome to be noticed. Take notice, The Bright Light Social Hour have my attention. | Buy

The Green Ray – Five Points Of Light (Reckless)

After discovering several bands that had been around a while last year, including The Green Pajamas, I found yet another green psych band over the new year. The Green Ray assembled from members of London’s early 70s country psych band Help Yourself (Richard Treece, who died in 2015) and psych proggers Man, and released a Half Sentences in 2017, garage psych with some rustic, sprawling Crazy Horse guitar work. They also contributed a cover of John Martyn’s “Dusty” on the Three Seasons compilation. Just after starting work on their second album, bassist Jeff Gibbs passed away. They recruited Dave Mackenzie and completed Five Points Of Light summer 2019.

While their first album occasionally loses me, their second is an impressive progression from such a group of seasoned musicians. The dual extended solos of Simon Whaley and Martin James Gee persist, but with more inviting arrangements and hooks, sounding like what I imagine The Quicksilver Messenger Service might have done had they fulfilled their destiny, particularly on the 8:28 closer “Closer (To Afar).”

“Small Springs” is even longer at 9:09, slowly unfolding with exquisitely delicate guitar work, the vocals not coming in until six and a half minutes. Opener “Sangsara Shanty” follows a similar template on a more compressed timelines, but with more ornate psychedelic licks, kicking into a chugging garage rocker halfway through, the riffs becoming more blistering. This is definitely a guitar lover’s album. “On A Sixpence” is a jangle rocker, and “Clouds Away Tomorrow” brings to mind the sort of cosmic Americana that Help Yourself delved in. “Before The Fall” is a nicely balanced work of pastoral acoustic strumming and clean, jazzy electric guitar. The psychedelic country folk title track also features some lovely acoustic picking.

I searched hard for music like this lately, but didn’t find this band until I stumbled upon them by accident. A true hidden jam.

Skeleton Goode – Skeleton Goode (Mega Dodo)

Skeleton Goode started as a solo project shortly after Jack Briggs left the UK for Saigon, Vietnam. Named after the last track on Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band’s last album, “Skeleton Makes Good,” the entity eventually became a full-fledged band, with drummer and fellow Brit George Bussell, American and Berklee grad Kyle Kersey on bass, and Japanese guitarist Kai Horino.

The resulting debut album is a freewheeling mix of garage psych, classic Beach Boys harmonies, the whackiness of The Mothers Of Invention, a touch of Beefheart’s jagged edges, plus a splash of surf rock, thanks to Briggs’ growing collection (40 so far) of Japanese guitars with twangy tremolo arms. He hints that the splash could turn into a more prominent wave on their next album.

“Ask Tomorrow” features minor key guitar picking made to resemble a sitar, the menacing Eastern melody almost requisite among retro psych bands, but given a fresh, authentic spin by these East Asian ex-pats. “Razors In The Clay” could be an outtake from Cream’s Disraeli Gears, while I believe I hear a mellotron lurking in the background of “Stare Of The Stranger,” giving it psych prog flavor that I’d love to hear more of. “Leaf Green Gamma Girlz” has the playful nursery rhyme feel of an early Syd Barret-era Pink Floyd single. The album wraps up with another highlight, the brooding “When The Dragon Flies Low,” featuring some mighty tricksy blues prog guitar interplay.

The album tackles a wide variety of styles that might hang together somewhat loosely, but shows a ton of exciting potential. They made a great choice in picking British label Mega Dodo, home of like-minded artists The Honey Pot, Octopus Syng and Green Seagull. I saw the album while buying Crystal Jacqueline’s latest solo album, heard parts of two tracks and bought it immediately. No regrets at all on this impulse buy, as the band has grown on me steadily since.

tyle=”border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;” src=”https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3439189018/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=e99708/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/” seamless=””>Skeleton Goode by Skeleton Goode

Keys – Bring Me The Head Of Jerry Garcia (Libertino)

I’m starting to lose track of how many bands I’ve discovered this past year that have roots going back to the 90s. The Cardiff-based Keys began in 1999 as Murry The Hump, releasing one album in 2001, shortly after which they evolved into the garage psych rockin’ Keys. On their fifth album, they have expanded their whomping garage crunch with some moments of startling beauty.

Their four previous albums are nearly impossible to find to buy, but at least Spotify has Fire Inside (2010), Bitten By Wolves (2011) and Ring The Changes (2014). All have plenty of highlights, but for a band into their third decade, it’s impressive that they have hit a peak with Bring Me The Head Of Jerry Garcia, kicking off with the epic opener, “Pussyfooting/(Gareth Bale) Killed My Scene” where the staccato Yardbirds guitars morphs through a cosmic Hendrix space bridge into a lovely freefalling space groove. A pretty ambitious start.

They won’t reach for that kind of scope again until the bookend of the album, “Broken Bones,” but holding the up the middle is the nicely spare ‘n’ thonkin’ “Black and White,” that really should be a single. I guess it pretty much was, with the cool video on YouTube. Their next video single, “I Only Want You for Your Rock and Roll,” sounds like a third rate Primal Scream title, but is good noisy fun just the same. |Buy

James McArthur And The Head Gardeners – Intergalactic Sailor (Moorland)

London trio James McArthur & The Head Gardeners might have flown under my radar if it weren’t for the involvement of Syd Arthur’s Joel & Liam Magill. The band’s chamber folk psych with McArthur’s breathy vocals are nearly a tad too tasteful for my tastes. However, the band’s unique combination of acoustic guitar, pedal steel and violin, combined with the gently ethereal songs snaked through my head incessantly until they were embedded, and going without them was no longer an option.

Recording was split between the Magill’s Wicker Studios, and Kate Bush’s home East Wickham Farm, and focused listening slowly unfurl’s the extent of the band’s progressive tendencies. The deceptively simple sounds rest on a complex, woven bed of textures. On the cover, an astronaut floats in a void, probably mournfully looking toward our planet as humans unceremoniously destroy it. The music a wistful reminder of the small moments of beauty still possible. Strange Readings From The Weather Station (2015) and Burnt Moth (2017) are nearly as great.

Fred Deakin – The Lasters (Impotent Fury)

Inspired to create a science fiction concept album along the lines of Jeff Wayne’s The War Of The Worlds (1978), Lemon Jelly’s Fred Deakin worked several years on a story set in a dystopian near-future post-climate change apocalyptic Earth. War between the Luddites and Technologists has dwindled the population near extinction. The 73 minute album tells the story about the abandoned daughter produced by the leaders of the two opposing factions. I wonder if Deakin read Brian K. Vaughan’s epic space opera comic, Saga

Deakin shares vocal duties with three other leads, Charlotte Hatherley (Ash), Abi Sinclair, and Steffan Huw Davies. While I’m not always a fan of the often awkward attempts at rock operas over the years, I have to say this beats the hell out of Quadrophenia to my ears. It helps that the story is actually easy to follow, and the psych pop/prog music is pretty damn delightful throughout. This sort of thing is not exactly fashionable these days. But it deserves a live production with elaborate sets and shit tons of lasers. Perhaps a condensed version could go on TikTok, and they too could win a Grammy…| Buy

Magic Shoppe – Circles (Cardinal Fuzz)

The Stargazer Lilies – Occabot (Rad Cult)

I liked The Stargazer Lillies’ third album Lost (2017), but their latest, released in November, flew under my radar until recently. Produced by fellow Pennsylvanian TOBACCO of Black Moth Super Rainbow, the album features his signature layered, gauzy, semi hypnagogic style, veering their shoegaze dream pop into some freshly weird, psychedelic pastures. Just like with the cover art, I’m simultaneously repulsed and compelled to lick it.

Ancient River – After The Dawn (Summer Moon)

Mr. Elevator – Goodbye, Blue Sky (Castle Face) Buy

Tomas Dolas formed Mr. Elevator & The Brain Hotel to explore his love of keyboard-heavy psych as a change of pace from his gig with the guitar-centric Thee Oh Sees. While Nico & Her Psychedelic Subconscious (2013) and When the Morning Greets You (2017) have strong late sixties vibes, the new one reflects diversified interests in French, Japanese and German electronic music, and Distortions (1971), a one-off project by mysterious Italian psych prog outfit Blue Phantom. Despite the band’s analogue focus, there’s an easy-listening vibe on many of the songs that resemble more recent bands like Air. Not exactly my wheelhouse, but essential listening for connoisseurs of all things chill.

Elephant Stone – Hollow (Fuzz Club) Feb 14

From their site: “Hollow is an ambitious, dystopian sci-fi concept album which he says is inspired by The Who’s Tommy, The Pretty Things’ S.F. Sorrow and the second side of The Beatles

“There are a lot of unhappy people out there who are trying to find a way out. They are looking for meaning and something to believe in… or nothing to believe in. We all want the same thing but are trying to achieve it in different ways. With this in mind, I set forth writing a song-suite telling of a world of unhappy souls who have lost connection with each other.”

From Side A (‘The Beginning) though to Side B (‘The Ending’), the story told through Elephant Stone’s renowned garage-psych alchemy takes place immediately after mankind’s catastrophic destruction of the Earth and what happens when the same elite responsible for the first world-destroying climate disaster touch down on New Earth, a recently-discover planet sold with the same life of prosperity as the one they’d just destroyed. As soon as the chosen few step off the Harmonia ship built for the journey, it’s clear that all is not what it seems and humanity appears destined to make the same mistakes: “The storyline touches upon the plundering/poisoning of their home, the elite, demagogues, false idols, the truth as seen by children, and, ultimately, the fight for the survival of their species.”

Eyelids – Accidental Falls (Décor) Feb 14

Shadow Show – Silhouettes (Burger) Feb 14

From Burger records site: ” Hailing from Detroit, Shadow Show is a new sound in light of a new era. ​Sleek and spellbinding, the music sweeps you up into its frenetic ​psychedelic grooves and ​dazzling harmonies​.

Shadow Show pushes the boundaries of what can be, yet remains deeply rooted in the raw, untouchable Detroit sound. At the age of 17 they delved into a world where time no longer exists, where music takes its reign and everything else follows: Detroit’s music scene as it stands. It’s one of those things that remains almost as if it shouldn’t. Shadow Show started out in the dregs of the forgotten metropolis in a dark and transitional time for the city, playing in the basements of battered manors and inconspicuous store fronts. As the surrounding landscape changed, so did the soundscape the people of Detroit had created for themselves. Shadow Show, in its truest form, represents the love of a time long lost and the will of a time not yet discovered.

A power trio of a mysterious hue, Shadow Show combines elements of 60’s garage-psychedelia into a 21st century modern pop-art incarnation. They project a vision to the world in their display: a spectacle of light as curious as shadow. Shadow Show, comprised of guitarist Ava East, bassist Kate Derringer, and drummer Kerrigan Pearce, debuted in August 2018. | Buy

Tame Impala – The Slow Rush (Interscope) Feb 14 |

When Tame Impala took their new electronic direction with Currents (2015), supposedly inspired by Kevin Parker’s love of the Bee Gees and Supertramp, I was disappointed. Plenty of fans still dig ’em, and I suppose their current music does exude the “technology-driven sense of loneliness of this decade.” Many of the songs are already streaming on Spotify (see playlist below), and it’s more of the same. Perhaps he’s lonely because he misses his guitar? I’ll reserve full judgement until I hear the whole thing a few times. Buy

Nick Haeffner – A New Life Awaits You (Code 7) Mar 6

The voice of unsung cult post-punk/psych hero is finally being heard thanks to a renaissance of reissues, reunions and new material. Last year Nick Haeffner got together with his old post-punk band The Tea Set (1978-81) for some performances, new song and video “Pharoahs,” and the Cleopatra released the compilation of their complete catalog in July, Back In Time For Tea. Then in December, Hanky Panky reissued a double album version of his underrated solo debut, The Great Indoors (1987), a truly original collection that marries his post-punk background with Syd Barrett psych and jangle pop. He also snaked, with little fanfare, a batch of new songs onto Bandcamp in the form of A New Life Awaits You, which will see release on physical formats March 6. The new album incorporates more recent interests in ambient pop, making it more diverse and inevitably less impactful than his classic debut, but still worthy of intimate listening.

The Sonic Dawn – Enter The Mirage (Heavy Psych) Mar 27

Along with looking forward to the end of the dreary winter, I have to say it’s a pretty sweet carrot to have another album from the Danish band who had the #2 album in Fester’s Lucky 13 just last year. From their site, it sounds like they’re ready to rock a bit harder.

From the band’s press release:

Enter the Mirage’s overall theme is freedom. It is about visions that may seem too distant to be real, but only those who take the trip will ever really find out. Frontman, Emil Bureau, explains about the album’s inception:

—First I lost my father, then I lost my job and finally I lost my will to be a servant of anything that isn’t peace, love and freedom. It should be simple, but in this world it isn’t. Instead of getting back on the so-called career path, which is generally a dead end, I took a leap of faith, with the band’s support.

Bureau spent half a year in a songwriting frenzy, spawning not only Enter the Mirage by The Sonic Dawn, but also a solo album in the folk genre (available via Heavy Psych Sounds).

To give form to these song ideas, the Danish trio rented a space in the gloomiest part of Copenhagen, set up a studio there and rocked out for two months. You hear that roughness, present as a determined attitude from a tightly knit band. With three past albums and some 200 shows under their belt, The Sonic Dawn is a psychedelic group to be reckoned with.

However, at the end of their long and laborious creative process, the band was completely broke. Fortunately, friend and former producer, Thomas Vang, allowed them to mix the album in The Village Recording at night, after his own sessions. Thanks to this, and a skillful mastering by Hans Olsson Brookes (Graveyard et al.) Enter the Mirage puts the HIGH back in high fidelity. Turn up the volume and experience The Sonic Dawn.

Rosalie Cunningham – TBD

The Rosalie Cunningham train is in motion, with no signs of slowing. She already had written the songs for her second album, completed pretty much before her debut was released. In an email last week, she announced recording is underway, along with a short tour. Could she be the first artist ever to win album of the year at Fast ‘n’ Bulbous for two consecutive years? Judging from some of the enticing sounds in the video below, it’s a distinct possibility!

Spotify Playlist

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