Tag Archives: psychedelia
STILL BLOOMING GOOD
One of the holy grails of rock music is the making of an album that defies time. The Stone Roses achieved this with their 1989 self-titled debut, a shimmering melodic masterpiece with a dark heart. From the Jackson Pollock inspired cover with its paint-trail puzzle to the ecstatic, epic final track “I am the resurrection”, […]
SOUTH OF REALITY
Fun! Eccentricity! Experimentation! Swooshy noises! Unapologetic eclecticism! We could be talking about the wonder years of UK psychedelic pop, but we are not. Those descriptors, and more, belong to twenty-first century outfit The Claypool Lennon Delirium whose second album—South of Reality—was released in February 2019. And let it be known that this record is a […]
YOUNG AND FRESH
First albums by bands are always interesting, though not necessarily essential. Sometimes the artist is feeling their way, often the vision is a work-in-progress, occasionally it’s “All Change!” after the first effort. The two 1968 debuts we’re looking at in this post cover most of the bases mentioned above. Both are worthy of attention; both […]
LIFE IS SHORT, ART IS LONG
“When did prog rock begin?” is a question that gets trotted out periodically and always invites a storm of opinion, most of it generating more heat than light. A big part of the problem is a lack of shared understanding around the terms. What is prog? Is it different from progressive music? And what constitutes […]
SPACE TRUCKIN’
Well into the second decade of the 21st Century, it is wonderfully anachronistic that bands are still twisting the kaleidoscope of psychedelia. One such is Toronto’s Comet Control. Based around the songwriting partnership of guitarists Chad Ross and Andrew Moszynski (whose relationship pre-existed musically in the psych-metal band Quest For Fire), Comet Control released their […]
VERY FROND
Over a decade ago my friend BB introduced me to The Bevis Frond. This was both a blessing and a curse. The blessing part was simple: enjoying Nick Saloman’s psychedelic-infused, guitar-driven songs has been no chore at all. In fact, my respect for his extensive songbook has grown steadily over the years. Which leads us […]
BACK TO TOMORROW
The Sixties began in the summer of 1956, ended in the October of 1973 and peaked just before dawn in 1 July, 1967 during a set by Tomorrow at the UFO Club in London. So begins the entertaining memoir of Joe Boyd, educated middle-class American and key player in the much mythologised ‘swinging London’ scene […]
OFF THE WATER, BACK TO LAND
There are a number of interesting things about San Francisco’s Wooden Shjips, not least their idiosyncratic approach to spelling. Here are a few others: They were formed in 2003 by Ripley Johnson with the express purpose of creating innovative music and not being famous. Following a Captain Beefheart tradition, they explored playing instruments with which […]
TURNTABLE TRAVELS
As far as travelling was concerned, I was a late starter. Most of the people I knew had been somewhere outside of Australia, even if it was just a package trip to Bali (cue song, Redgum, 1984). Many had done the Europe thing and had come back somehow wiser, more knowing, more confident… more something. […]
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