Category: psychedelic

TRACK | No Lonesome – Good Hurt

5/5 golden merles

No Lonesome’s “Good Hurt” offers a nice, vibrant stain derived from the guttural undercurrent-slurry of Americana, freak-folk and anti-folk. There’s a rich hybridization fermented in its depths, at least a bit of alt country, psych and pop rock in there as well. The tune provides so much joy and triumphant careening for something seemingly repelled and defined by its antitheses.

But as well it should be. “The ultimate hidden truth of the world,” as Graeber wrote, “is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.”

It is again the care in the compiling that appeals to me most. There’s a lot to admire in the accumulated decision making, investing the piece with details, small phases arranged and melding the rougher edges: the spoken background chatter around the one and two minute marks, the gently mangled vocoder chorus of backing vocals rising in support, its plumed horns and alternating drum lanes that reinforce from differing angular plots upon the soundscape. It all invests the structure with greater meaning and acts in the service of the feeling which is evoked.

“This time / it’s a good hurt… / I’ll love you all I can.”

Friends of Goon / Women / Nerve City / Casual Technicians will likely find some camaraderie in its viscid texture, winding melodic sensibilities, and earnest, heartache-hemorrhaged proclamations.

The four track digital album “Am I What I’m Not?” is available now for $5 on the bandcamp.

TRACK | Goon – Death Spells

5/5 golden merles

With “Death Spells,” Kenny Becker and Goon have again (and again) produced some of the most engaging melodic psych folk around. In the elaborately warped structure you are agreeably consumed, intricacies compiling and enveloping, comfortably saturating the self without obliterating it. Some trick.

“Death spells are coming down / don’t go outside.” That’s how it begins. It really seems to me like some small banner held aloft in attempt to redeem the medium from utter ruin. Its composition and manner of maneuvering stands out like a healthy thumb amidst the swollen hand and arm and body and world at large.

Why don’t more people do this, don’t even seem to desire it? Probably because it is difficult. For most songwriters, after a couple of bars the intention is lost or staggers. After a couple iterations the melody conforms to a bare, essential framework, the tendrils and impulses are shorn and hewn for functionality, reproducibility. While writing a song you have to remember it.

There’s a fair amount of bravery to desire this type of expansion. And it’s something the maker must consider during the making, from the outset, as desirable. The risk of either excess, mathematical purity or utterly indistinct irrelevance, begs for a balance. And the only scale is an intuitive understanding of form and the history of shared forms/symbols with the audience. Awareness and ability do not often go hand in hand.

It breaks my brain that the first reviews of Goon on this blog are now 3 years old for how fresh the tracks still sound, timeless I guess. The track is $2 on the bandcamp.

If you like it, see somewhat similar operators: memory card, Melaina Kol, Windowsill. This is the direction (anti)folk should move into and a good illustration of how to incorporate uncertainty into the model without losing the essence, a bridge that has been burned but remains traversable.

Short recommendation:
For a similar level of attention to detail and world building, see Georges Schwizgebel, “78 Tours.“

TRACK | Little Oil – Hey Judas

5/5 golden merles

Coming 2nd among Twelve Songs, Little Oil’s “Hey Judas” is a psych-folk tune composed of deftly piercing hooks dispensing immense compassion. Piano’s plonk and murmuring synths ferry the arbitration neatly forward, familiar myths reconfigure, agreeably heralded in the heat of the room. The melodic components are strong. The envoy offers consolation, there’s very little dread to be found within a context usually larded with it, only sunny reconciliation.

How to even begin to approach this subject and themes in its gilded iron sarcophagus, or deflect the baggage of the bastards who claim its copyright?

The answer is: orthogonally, reinventing suppositions around base symbols we’re all locally steeped in, the reframing of the frame within another. Or just generally with a little innovation and the warmth distinct to those who remain in the world.

There’s plenty of good examples within the approximate genre to pull from and a nice suitable lineage. “Hey Judas” slides into place among other fine tracks such as Loose Fur’s “The Ruling Class,” Brian Jonestown Massacre’s “The Ballad of Jim Jones,” Page France’s full “Hello, Dear Wind,” Doug Marsch’s rendition of “Woke up this morning with my mind (staying on Jesus).”

The whole set has a lot of these same sensibilities, cutting melodies, rich images placed aside non-lexical grooves and is worth investigating. Cassettes from Fountain Inc. and digital are $12 on the Bandcamp.

TRACK | Sandy Pylos – La Modelo De Mis Fantasias

5/5 golden merles

Sandy Pylos is the psych/power pop project of Portland-based Paraguayan multi-instrumentalist Ana Belén. It is bedroom synthpop undeniably stacked with invention and melodic charm. Eschewing all manner of kitsch that plagues the genre, Belén allows wonder and devotion to manifest in a genuinely thoughtful and compelling account, all delivered to you inside a series of superb hooks. “La Modelo De Mis Fantasias” is the lead single off of the debut album, Notas de Voz. It is what pop music can sometimes be at it’s best: experimental, cunning & heartfelt.

There are aspects to the lyric and phrasing that are similar to the routes Dig Nitty or The Cowboys might take: language singularly formed, freshly dispatching the burden of invention, defiantly in search of the feeling but actively allergic to established routes. These turns and extrapolations tweak the universal and better reinforce the narrative, offering the listener the opportunity of discovering new paths between two points of familiar earth. The question is put to us by proxy: “Have you ever even been on a giant slide?”

In “La Modelo De Mis Fantasias” the chorus is given the right amount of time to wind its recursive variants: first as anthemic refrain, then reappearing within a field recorded rendition of writing or reciting, finally, later, among other elements, it emerges in a distinctly stripped-down acoustic version that ushers in the end. The duplication reaffirms the sentiment. Its inclusion seems to offer a glimpse of love expressed at other angles, the melody fluctuating with time and suiting evolving exterior circumstance. Arrangements morph, time passes, but the obsessive dedication nonetheless remains transfixed, an ever-present undercurrent and preoccupation. Witnessing that reification is as fun as it is compelling and enriching.

There’s plenty to admire in the works constituent parts, harmonizations and percussive fills. But simply dissecting the organs and putting them back together would miss the point. Whereas most creatives infatuated with 60s/psych rock might offer earnest but antiseptic covers and fine enough tributes, the great power and grace of this EP is reinterpreting particular methods in the pursuit of impact. It is assured and realized, utilizing what still works and subverting the rest. It is the difference between mimicry and mastery.

It is good when so very many things are not. Tapes are $8.00, mp3s/wav $5.

TRACK | Melaina Kol – Nu

5/5 golden merles

Melaina Kol creates Youngsville, North Carolina-based lo-fi bedroom rock. AMOSAT is layered in rich and compelling material, a delicately discordant ambiance constructed with much persistently viable misdirection stacked around the solid songwriting. “Nu” offers loads of angular pieces approaching of their own accord, an entire woven world of it to delve and get lost in, subtle hooks and abundant texture.

If I ever make anything good, I’ll have taken some lessons from this: its patience and sense of rerouting the narrative within the greater whole. There a lot of skill in guiding the persistent observer or judge in a kind of favorable figment or refracting everything in a favorable light; it’s nice to see such skill given to the refinement of experiment and innumerable unique transitions between tracks.

All of that is of value and is a kind of expertise that slowly accumulates an audience in the world, at least you hope so. It can be held by Naming your price at the bandcamp. Also check out the re-release of a set of 2017 tracks now out on tape/digital from 7th Heaven.

TRACK | Palánta – Éhség

5/5 golden merles

Hardcore synth punk from Budapest, “Éhség” is the 3rd track on Palánta’s super demo. Melodies allocate across the runtime like a fine cognitive dissonance, only in stepping back through the frames and on repetition are we able to admire the whole from outside. While it is not a servant to structural form, it maintains a steady groove inside the atomic levels with undeniable tones and talons. All passion and experiment, what is provided is plenty compelling.

When the vocal hands off the melody 90 seconds in, the relay refines further. Through the strong performance is transmitted a tale of merger through devouring, the escalating and the colliding. There is a metamorphosis recounted, achieved through ritualized abuse or hunger and dehumanization, the conscripted contortions of nature dubbed natural. Sneering and smirking at history, we continue to repeat every mistake, possibly by design.

The set is coming soon in a physical form through SZÉGYEN KAZETTÁK. For now, name your price on the digital wares. Found through the reliable stewards of rock at Tremendo Garaje.

TRACK | MIINT – Farmacopea

5/5 golden merles

Mérida, Mexico-based psych punk, with a great acuity of influence, blending many genre elements of surf, garage, shoegaze and some field-recording experimentation toward the latter stages of the album. Opening salvo “Farmacopea” stretches to what would seem a breaking point. But before you know it it’s wrapped back around, the ouroboros insatiable, the spine of bass holding steady.

In light of all that, the production is equal parts bone crunching and soaring. Change is constant and the track is always moving forward, chimeric, feinting and lacerating. These whims come naturally and compound in the cloth of the thing, all of the delirious addendums arriving to seize and gratify. Much is made from the synthesis, its hybrid and contorted form a myriad of chaoses I find to be compelling.

Proceeding to the bandcamp, the digital ghost of the record can be captured for $26 MXN ($1.29 USD).

TRACK | Zero Percent APR – Heavy Fucking Metal

5/5 golden merles

Immense and worthy, Zero Percent APR refines lo-fi psych punk roundabouts Austin, TX. “Heavy Fucking Metal” applies the rightful insolence due the stupid world but with a craft and consideration for their contemporaries who must endure its excesses alongside them (this means you). Yarns spun and death belittled in the thorough classification, there’s masterly world building before the stylistic dismantling.

I’m enlightened now, can’t you tell / when I die I wanna burn in hell. To explain why it works is a bit nasty and brutish, the rigors and ardor self-evident, sorta ineffable. But I have no shame, so: with its great consistency of the segments and variations on the heavy metal definitions, it has a feeling of the range, method and effect of great rock like Destroy All Monsters, “You’re gonna die.” It is one hell of a preview for the album to come, 23 tracks of this gleeful venom releasing on November 4th.

Preorder black vinyl from the label that knows your innermost thoughts and doesn’t care, Spared Flesh, for $20, digital is $8.

TRACK | Smirk – Minuscule Amounts

5/5 golden merles

Some of the finest lo-fi punk you can gather in your basket, recently brought back to my attention by the Tr0tsky’s mixcloud show, “Pretend You Like It.” Criminally, I didn’t write on it yet, only mentioning one from the prior pile. Smirk’s 2021 EP has cornered the market on collapsible hooks, retracting into the deep fried tones, only to be strategically released upon closer inspection. It bites back.

An analgesic itself, the staggered overlap of the chorus and the tones & textures on these guitars make most other production look like a pile of puke. I shudder for those who can’t hear the nuance in the noise, this one is calibrated. Some field/sample elaborations round out this alternate dimension in which everything can be found in its right place.

Supporting music video is gorgeous and crafted with a commensurate amount of care to parallel the track itself. Digital for the cost of naming your own price. Or the vinyl is on a second pressing through Portland’s Total Punk Records.

TRACK | That Hideous Sound – Funny Insides

5/5 golden merles

That Hideous Sound has built a bedroom lo-fi rock track from discarded sunshine, utilizing twisted blood as a propellant. Its alternating sync of garage tone is held aloft and amended with a density of layered backing vocals, their varied trajectories glowingly cascading downward. The whole miscellany is shining and the right kind of sordid.

The fundamentals are nailed and the tonal textures irradiated, slickly building momentum throughout. With that rising, explicating over the expanses as it does, I’d wager most will rejoice to share in it. The final minute of three involves transitioning into some controlled experimentation, concluding in a sundry of cloaked loops at the latter stages. It’s all very good and pleasant, if you ask me.

A digital copy of the track can be downloaded to your personal solid state or hard disc drive for $1 USD. Or, for the wise investor, the album of 10 tracks is aggregated at $7, a savings of 30%. It is to be released October 7th, should the world continue to exist at such a time.