Coming to you straight from Saarbrücken, Germany is Pretty Lightning’s newest album – Night Wobble. This new LP is the German trio’s second instrumentals-only album, but it is their sixth full-length project to date. I was offered to take a listen to this project before its official release and invited to take a sonic journey through an “oozy, woozy cowboy groove”, as described by the band. Night Wobble is a fun psychedelic fusion album – the band says the album is “dusty spaghetti-western psychedelia, Tuareg-derived desert-blues, library music and ’70s progressive”. Just based on the description alone, I was super stoked to get my headphones on and sit with the…
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Elephant Stone: Back Into The Garage – Demos and Unreleased Tracks
The Canadian psychedelic band Elephant Stone has released a follow-up of sorts to their 2024 album Back Into The Dream – an album of the remains of “what could have been”. Back Into The Garage is comprised of the home demos that frontman Rishi Dhir created during the writing process for Back Into The Dream during Christmas 2021. Dhir calls the album a “collection of charmingly imperfect songs” and a “sneak peek into [his] creative process”. This 10-track album is a delicious display of Dhir’s composition and creative abilities. Back Into the Garage is my first introduction to Rishi Dhir and Elephant Stone. Though listening to an album of demos…
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Knockout 10.27.23 – Psyched! Fest 2023. Reckling, Annabelle Chairlegs, Daydream Twins, The Grizzled Mighty and WIFE
I attended Psyched! Fest 2023 show at the Knockout on October 27th, one of multiple shows sponsored by Psyched! Radio SF. This was the sixth show in their series of shows in San Francisco. This was the smallest of all the shows, showcasing bands in a smaller and more intimate venue, where they could interact with the crowd in all their Halloween costumes. There was a DJ set by 13 Angels, playing some good standards like The Smiths and others, to set the mood of the show in between sets, “spinning melodic enchantments that will transport you to otherworldly dimensions,” but it’s also hard to hear the DJ at the…
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They Blinded Me with Psych! The Chemistry Set’s “Pink Felt Trip”
As a mom of an 8 month old, most of the music I’m currently listening to is “Baby Shark” related. And while those “doo doo doo doo”s are admittedly pretty catchy, it’s incredibly refreshing for me to get to hear something complex, ephemeral, and COOL. Pink Felt Trip, the latest album from The Chemistry Set is all of those things and more. The Chemistry Set are no newcomers to the scene- this year marks their 35th anniversary making music. The cult London Psychedelic band The Chemistry Set have quite a history. Founded by Dave Mclean and Paul Lake in 1987, the band are veterans of the alternative Manchester label “Imaginary”…
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Lockdown Licks and Teenage Kicks with The Recalls’ “There Is No End”
Psychedelic music is having a moment… Or perhaps more appropriately, an eternal cosmic now. Whether it’s post-post-modernism’s accelerating stylistic-shuffle or part of some kind of Covid-culture’s self-isolated journey inwards to a post-human future; psyche, garage, punk or whatever ultimately futile bid to categorise its puissant energy you care to use, the form seems an ironically sober response to modern times. As it was in the Year of Our Prophet, Lord Lenny of Kaye back in ’72 when the Village Voice music critic and future Patti Smith Band guitarist laid Nuggets on a nascent Punk scene and blew everybody’s, technically already, blown minds. Kaye’s hoard of rough cut yet majestic sonic…
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Dusty Trails and Tall Tales with Tele Novella’s “Merlynn Belle”
Hold onto your cowboy hats, paper crowns and powdered wigs! Small-town Texan charmers Tele Novella are riding back into town with Merlynn Belle, another technicolor time-traveling record packed with all the quirky characters and dramatic scenery your quarantine dreams can hold. It’s been four years since last we heard a note from Natalie Ribbons and partner Jason Chronis, who made names for themselves in the bands Agent Ribbons and Voxtrot respectively, and their long awaited second full length album opens with a question that many fans may have been asking themselves: “Where did you go?” Judging from this new collection of mournful odes to witches, shrines and pearls, it sounds…
