San Francisco has long produced great psychedelic music, and The Love Dimension’s newest album – Balance – is no exception. A little blues-rocky, a bit surf-rocky, and a whole lot of psychedelic, Balance is a journey into the San Francisco soundscape of the 60s through a modern lens.
The journey through Balance was really enjoyable – all of the tracks are fantastic in their own right. However, I feel it’s better to take time to go into depth on a few select highlights of the album rather than each song on the album.
This album had really unexpected opening and closing tracks: Frogs of Meadow Creek and Frogs of Meadow Creek II. These two ambient/field recording-style tracks are filled with the sound of frogs and Meadow Creek. These tracks are great bookends for the record. It’s a really unique aspect of this record – they couldn’t be more different than the body of the rest of the album. I feel like these two tracks serve to ground the album – a “welcome to” and a “thanks for stopping by” sort of thing. I really enjoyed this unexpected pair of songs, and I would love to see more openers and closers like this.
In This Place felt more in line with some 60s pop influence. It feels a bit Beatles-esque with the instrumentation on the guitar and the overall tone of the song. It’s a perfect fit for an album that seems to be heavily inspired by the 60s. In This Place is a slower, downtempo song and I feel it balances out the more up-tempo and faster-paced songs further into the record. I really enjoyed how this song was allowed to “breathe”. There are some spots where there’s a beat of silence. It almost feels as if we’re being given a second to appreciate the music a bit more.
The final song I’d like to highlight is my favorite off the album: Spinning in Circles. It’s a super upbeat song with a catchy tune and really great riffs throughout the instrumentals. I really like the way the keys are used in this track. I feel like the specific “tone” or audio output used on the keys on this track is often found in upbeat gospel or worship music, so it was interesting to hear something I associate with that specific context in a song that is very far from those two genres. I think that the keys and the guitar play off each other really nicely on this track, both tonally and rhythmically.
Overall, Balance is a really fun album and a great look into some of the defining sounds of the 60s. Balance is available on streaming platforms, and you can find The Love Dimension on their website, YouTube, Bandcamp, X, Instagram, Facebook, and Soundcloud.
Be apart of the scene at the record release concert June 28th, 2025 @ Thee Parkside, San Francisco, CA – w/ The Love Dimension (also album release show) and Hangtown. Pick up the album, meet the band and be part of the heady vibes. https://tickets.venuepilot.com/e/the-green-door-album-release-the-love-dimension-album-release-hangtown-2025-06-28-thee-parkside-san-f-4dcd72
