blackleatherbookshelf | Entries tagged with psychedelica

Psychedelic Stew
4 Out Of 5 Stars

While The Black Keys were always something of a glorified garage band, it's no surprise that they'd eventually delve in to the psychedelical forms of the 60's garage bands. Think "96 Tears" or "Journey To The Center of Your Mind." So the question isn't so much as what The Black Keys are doing with the spacy sounds that scatter through "Turn Blue," It's more like, "What took you so long?" Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, along with producer Danger Mouse, delve deep in the a psychedelic swamp and emerge with a mighty fine album that is sure to polarize. The album is still primarily the guitars and drums, but the crunch is replaced by woozy synths and female backing singers.

The opener, "Weight Of Love," puts it all out there. Straight up blues with touches of Pink Floyd spaciness, it's a mission statement. The band wants to expand their musical horizons and blow your mind at the same time. Ditto the single, "Fever." It's as sugary as it is spacy, while still pinned down by the guitar/drums of the Black Keys basic sound. Such mixtures run rampant all over "Turn Blue," be it the dreamy build up to a punchy "Bullet In The Brain" to the funky "10 Lovers," or the jungle drums of "It's Up To You Now," this album is The Black Keys tweaking their sound to a slightly different color palette.

But if you were missing the big guitars, then hang in there for the album's closer. "Gotta Get Away" has a big guitar hook raging on top of Danger Mouse's organ, landing the most basic rock on "Turn Blue." Complete with one of Dan's buzzing solos, it's just their way of saying they've still got their guts in the rock and roll of their previous albums. Love it or hate it, "Turn Blue" catches the Black Keys getting courageous enough to deliver an album that punches and floats, often in the same song.

Current Mood: amused
Current Location: Philadelphia
Current Music: "Gotta Get Away" The Black Keys

In the Shadow of "Pumped Up Kicks"
3 Out Of 5 Stars

Mark Foster, who essentially is Foster The People, had to work on the road with an actual band instead of his one man studio project. It makes his/their sophomore "Supermodel" a more expansive album than its predecessor. The songs are richer, with fuller sound and Foster's vocals are more assured than before. There's less dependence on gimmickry and more attention to making the songs solid throughout. The first single, "Coming Of Age," drives down this path expertly.

However, "Pumped Up Kicks" set the bar pretty high and "Torches" was an average album built around a brilliant single. "Supermodel" doesn't have anything to match that watermark. Even with "Coming Of Age," the rest of the album is - again - a pretty average affair. "Are You Who You Want to Be?" does up Foster The People's rock quotient, and "Pseudologia Fantastica" plays around with MGMT's trippiness (so does "A Beginner's Guide To Destroying The Moon," a better title than actual song), but "Supermodel" shows little growth from Foster The People's debut. Download the mentioned songs and you get the best of what can only be referred to as a sophomore slump of an album.

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: Philadelphia
Current Music: "Are You Who You Want To Be" Foster The People

In our hearts there is evil that wants out
4 Out Of 5 Stars

Engrossing. That's one of the few ways I can describe The Flaming Lips' psychedelic downer of "The Terror." Weaving synthesizers and electronic sounds back and forth into a soundscape that will not let you escape its trauma, this is an album that has an equal only in the likes of Pink Floyd or Radiohead's "Kid A." But where Radiohead broke their minimalism into separate songs, "The Terror" plays all the way through like a whole piece, and a black hole of a piece it is.

It's hard to believe the Flaming Lips have been around for almost 30 years and are still capable of surprising their devout audience. The fuzzy fun of "At War With The Mystics" or the space opera of "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots" were adventures that were often punctuated with oddball pop, but you'll find nothing like that on "The Terror." "Love is always something, something you should fear" is one of the first lines on the album, and things get even more despairing from there. Pain and unhappiness are the major themes of this bleak album, with death and anger at almost every corner.

Yet, despite that anger, the music never rises beyond anything but a meandering riff here and there (like on the ear snagging "You Lust") and lead Lip Wayne Coyne's falsetto repeating hypnotically sad choruses like "you're not alone, you are alone." "The Terror" is not an album for the seriously depressed, or someone looking for the dizzy bliss you'll find on other Flaming Lips CD's. It's a great headphone album, because of all the mixed texturing, but that only draws out the overall unhappiness of hearing a disembodied voice telling you "you will see how long it takes to die." Bordering on a masterpiece. "The Terror" is a depressant that, once you listen to it, you'll have a hard time escaping.

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Current Mood: artistic
Current Location: Philadelphia
Current Music: "You Lust" The Flaming Lips

Weather Report
4 Out Of 5 Stars

I've often thought that the Grateful Dead entered the sessions for "Wake of The Flood" with an attitude of having something to prove. They'd ended a long standing deal with Warner Brothers records and decided to start their own record label (the initial catalog number was GD01), Ron "Pigpen" McKernan had passed away, and it had been some years since their last studio album "American Beauty." New keyboardist Keith Godchaux, and his wife Donna on backing vocals were in the studio for the first time as Dead Members (they'd already been featured on the two prior live albums). This was a new era for the band and they kicked it off with a stellar set.

"Wake of The Flood" continues the Dead's psychedelic folk-rock, with the team of Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter locking up five of the disc's seven numbers, Keith joins Hunter for "Let Me Sing Your Blues Away" and Bob Weir delivers the epic "Weather Report Suite," one of the loveliest songs the group has ever done. "Stella Blue" features a passionate yet sad vocal from Garcia, and the chipper "Eyes of the World" has since become a deserved Dead Classic.

Still, it's Weir's three part and thirteen minute epic "Weather Report" that makes "Wake of The Flood" a keeper for me. Weir lays down a great vocal and Keith adds impeccable piano to the track, and the "Prelude" is simply beautiful. Ending with the jazzy "Let it Grow," the band previewed the kind of epic/suite styled recording that would come to full bloom on "Terrapin Station." Of the bonus tracks, the live rendition of "Eyes of The World" is the best of the three, and the early version of "China Doll" (released in a completed version on "From The Mars Hotel"). As a whole, "Wake of The Flood" found the band ever evolving, with a little jazzier side than before and a mellow groove over all. Even though it produced no real "hits" for the band, it remains a hidden gem in their discography.

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Current Mood: awake
Current Location: Philadelphia
Current Music: "Weather Report Suite" Grateful Dead

Open and Closed Cases
5 Out of 5 Stars

The Doors' debut rewrote the songbook for how rock bands could behave. Essentially a power trio without a bass player, these four men bent and twisted conventional rock forms and dropped a fully-formed masterpiece on the first try. Jim Morrison exuded sensuality and anti-authoritarianism from the moment he opens his mouth on "Break On Through To The Other Side" and commands his followers to give up convention and follow him into his lizard kingdom.

Drummer John Densmore and guitarist Robby Krieger added texture more than structure, but the secret weapon was keyboardist Ray Manzarek. His organ and electric piano work often formed the foundations for the rest of the band to improvise on top of. The Doors could then run the gamut of stunning pop melodies ("Light My Fire") to the mystical ("Crystal Ship") all the way to the apocalyptic retelling of the oedipal complex, "The End." They were also fearless enough to take a Kurt Weill song and utterly reclaim it, or make Willie Dixon's "Back Door Man" into a psychedelic blues rivaling Janis Joplin.

If there was any problem with "The Doors," it was that it's too perfect; The Doors had a hard time living up to the aftershock. Still, this was the birth of an American Classic Band, and "The Doors" maintains its potency 40 years later.

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Current Mood: chipper
Current Location: Philadelphia
Current Music: "Back Door Man" The Doors

Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick
3 Out Of 5 Stars

Landing somewhere in the middle of The Flaming Lips' catalog is "Hit To Death In The Future Head," which has long felt like a transitional album in their continual chameleon-like career. The shift seems to be in a move away from the acidic psychedelia into psychedelic Beach Boys. Kinda like goodbye Sonic Youth, hello Beatles' White Album. This most easily found as the lazy roll of "The Sun" or the peppier, undeniably catchy "Gingerale Afternoon." Wayne Coyne is also exploring the possibilities of his singing voice; this is the first Lips CD where his singing really shines all they way through.

It may be also worth noting that "Hit" was the last Lips album to feature guitarist Jonathan Donahue and drummer Nathan Roberts were aboard. Donahue contributes plenty of guitar freakouts, like on "Frogs" and "The Magician Versus The Headache," along with all the whacked out sounds mixed into the CD's half-hour "bonus" track of cacophony. (Shades of 1997's Zaireeka, anyone?) There are plenty of epic moments to be found here, but the follow-up album was the powerful "Transmissions From The Satellite Heart," the Lips' artistic and commercial breakthrough. As such, "Hit" is a cool listen, but not the place to start of you want to discover why Flaming Lips can be such a magic band.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: Philadelphia
Current Music: "The Magician Vs The Headache" Flaming Lips

Wingtips Waltz Across Naive Wooden Floor
4 Out of 5 Stars

Reduced to a duo, Panic! At The Disco (now with reclaimed exclamation marks!) limp back to their emo-roots on "Vices and Virtues." Drummer Spencer Smith and guitar/vocalist Brendon Urie keep the name alive as bassist Jon Walker and guitarist Ryan Ross split. It's hard to tell who split for what reason, but "Vices and Virtues" is a clear step back from the goofy psychedelia of "Pretty Odd." Urie and Smith didn't completely drop their pastiche of everything 60's (as filtered perhaps, through XTC), but this album is in no way an obvious follow-up to "Pretty Odd's" naked ambition.

In fact, I was one of the reviewers who thought PO was a five star effort, reinvigorating the pomp and entertainment of bands like Jellyfish. Opener "Ballad of Mona Lisa" certainly attempts a recall of that giddy power-pop, than the album lurches firmly back into the mold of "Fever You Can't Sweat Out." This return to emo is not a vice, as PATD is really good at it, but it's not always a virtue. Urie and Smith keep up an energetic pace, and they love the production style that includes the phrase "and the kitchen sink." However, these two were not PATD's original principle songwriters, and some of the songs lack that killer hook.

That isn't a problem on the finale, "Nearly Witches." This song sounds like a leftover from the PO sessions, contains two kitchen sinks and has the killer hook. As "Vice's" oddball out song, it's a standout along with "Mona Lisa." "Let's Kill Tonight," "Ready To Go" and the ballad "Always" are the other keepers on the CD, and indicate that is Urie and Smith can work on their writing chops, this edition of Panic! At The Disco may be one that lasts.