Videos – Raven Sings The Blues

Colleen – “Winter Dawn”

by Andy on October 10, 2017·Videos

Perennial Thrill Jockey favorite Colleen is back and sinking deeper into the Kosmiche end of the pool. Ahead of her upcoming album A Flame My Love, A Frequency, she’s released a slow, mesmerizing video to the track “Winter Dawn”. Where before, Cécile Schott had worked through rippling compositions full of strings and built on an abundance of open atmospheres, now she takes as turn towards buzzing synths closing in her world with the rhythmic hum of a mechanical heartbeat. With her cave-echoed delivery, the song feels as vital as she’s ever been, taking a plunge toward analog psychedelics with a composer’s heart. The video, filled with gorgeously composed oil works by Connor R. Burke, is an absolutely engrossing watch that pairs perfectly with her new reliance on paced thrum.

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Premiere: Frankie & The Witch Fingers – “Sunshine Earthquake”

by Andy on October 10, 2017·Videos

As they head out on tour L.A.’s Frankie & The Witch Fingers offer up a peek into the psych-soul revival that threads its way throughout their fizzing new album, Brain Telephone. The band has always had a knack for the video format, from the LSD Alice in Wonderland of “Get Down” to the psychedelic noir of “Merry Go Round” and the latest clip just piles on the exploded neon psych vibes that have kept them runnin’ all these years. If you haven’t gotten a chance to check the album, give it a spin and if they’re landing near you, be sure to go get a breath of the real thing. The stage is where they truly shine.

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Full tour dates below:

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Ecstatic Union – “Illuminator”

by Andy on September 7, 2017·Videos

L.A. psych rockers Ecstatic Union slipped a solid release out on Lollipop recently and their single “Illuminator” encapsulates the feel good summer vibes that soak the entire record. Huge pop hooks are doused in the kind of glowing ’60s pop that permeated the Elephant Six catalog, taken even bigger by graduates like Beulah and The Sunshine Fix. The video has fun with a rapscallion beach rat character that brings a smile to any viewer. The rest of the record is worth a run as well. Get down with some sunshine vibes before they’re all gone.

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Beaches

by Andy on September 6, 2017·New Albums, Reviews, Videos

Aussie psych unit Beaches has built a carefully paced career, releasing just three albums since 2007. Doesn’t sound like much of a feat, but in an album a year environment (or five a year like some of their countrymen), the editing process doesn’t always come so naturally these days. Second of Spring plays to their strengths – atmosphere and hypnotic chug lead the way. They drop a dose of shoegaze, Krautrock, and psych in the blender then whip to a froth. The resulting double album is a hazy mountain of sound that proves to push the band to new heights.

Perhaps most refreshing is that, for a band that’s somewhat rooted in pop, this isn’t just an overstuffed collection of tracks that found their way floating to the top of the pile. They construct an arc of tonality that pushes past hooks and into using the album as environment, a larger canvass to work out their sonic swirl. They swerve through eddies of echo, with vocals so lost in the surrounding swamp they barely register. The next minute they kick up the rhythms to a motorik grind that practically pushes the angles into neon relief. Then they smack down the obfuscation altogether for a crush of pop, that’s certainly not pristine, but shining of its own accord.

The duality of shrouded vs. palpable, gauzy vs. catchy is what drives the album into psych-pop’s pantheon, marking this as the band’s best. Its no slight listen and that makes it worth going back to for repeated examinations of the elaborate folds the band pulls off here. Beaches have spent time honing their craft and it shows on Second Of Spring. If you’re looking for a breezy run, maybe hit up another Beach themed outfit, this one’s gonna make you take the climb to find the perfect wave.

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ORB – “A Man In The Sand”

by Andy on September 5, 2017·Videos

ORB are returning to the fold again, picking up their Sabbath-drenched saddlebags from the the stables of Flightless and Castleface. Though the album proper is drenched in a thick fuzz, shining up some old favorites into truly towering fare, they seem to be leading with an approach that highlights their willingness to bend from the expected lean on doom fuzz. The first track is rightly compared to their labelmates King Gizzard, and while it’s worthwhile knotty psych, it hews too close to their contemporaries’ sound. This one riles up the powerfuzz Syd Barett approach, which actually comes off like an S.F. Sorrow-era Pretty Things b-side. It sits alongside the album’s bong rattlers as a nice bit of respite and gives them some range. For those hoping that ORB still had some power in their pedals, fear not (more on that later). For now, find some joy in Alex McLaren’s kaleidoscopic cut-n-paste video which does the track well.

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Maston – “Swans”

by Andy on August 18, 2017·Videos

After a solid LP a few years back on Trouble In Mind and an EP/Rarities collection Frank Maston is back under his surname as a psych-pop provocateur on his own imprint Phonoscope. In the interim he’s been busy as a touring member of Jacco Gardner’s band and working with several members of The Allah-Las on side projects.

The first cut from his upcoming LP Tulips sees the songwriter again working in a vein of whimsical soft psych that pulls from Brian Wilson to The Focus Group in its approach to childlike wonder. The accompanying video and graphics play up the ’60s connection nicely with a faded filmstrip feel and some BBC echoing design. This track feels entirely like its part of a larger whole, and while nice on its own, it will be intriguing to know how this fits into Maston’s larger picture.

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Wireheads – “Indian Pacific Express’

by Andy on August 14, 2017·Videos

Getting to be a regular occurance around here, Wireheads have an album on the way via Tenth Court. The first cut is even more refined than I’ve heard them in the past – janglin’, plunking piano and a smooth keel running through Dom Trimboli’s vocals. This sounds like a natural progression from the material they’d cut into on Arrive, Alive, clean burning Aussie jangle with just the right touch of vulnerability and visceral punch. Definitely got eyes out for the new album.

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Wand – “Bee Karma”

by Andy on August 10, 2017·Videos

Second cut off of Wand’s upcoming LP pulls them even further from their fuzzbomb psych roots, diving hard into the ’90s end of the pool. With a stadium-shaker riff opening up “Bee Karma,” the band alternates between guitar crush and soft-alt, bordering on psych, but never toeing into the kind of haze they’ve enjoyed in the past. This, more than anything feels like a mark of Wand looking to widen their audience and shake the shackles of their Ty-indebted past. It’s working, though. While there’s a lot of ’90s grunge nostalgia bandying about these days, something about their unabashed melting of tentpole faves – the tender delivery of Thom Yorke, the gnarled STP licks, the larger than life bombast of Afghan Whigs – makes this all the more ballsy for the heart on it’s sleeve. The clip, goes in for a weird, sad clown car ride and another glitching bird makes a corner cameo.

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Spectre Folk – “We’re So Tired”

by Andy on August 8, 2017·Videos

Volume 4. heralded the welcomed return of Pete Nolan’s Spectre Folk after a five year hiatus. The album employs the help of alt legends Steve Shelley and Mark Ibold, diving headlong into the fuzzed psych fallout that Nolan has become known for. The clip for “We’re So Tired,” a gauzy, pulsating standout from the album, employs flashing black and white geometirics for a psychedelic strobe mind melt. The track is pure Spacemen 3 rough filtered through a nimbus thick shock of smoke and cinder. Simple, but effective, this clip is nothing if not mesmerizing.

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Zola Jesus – “Exhumed”

by Andy on August 4, 2017·Videos

With a new Zola Jesus release on the way this fall, the horizon’s grown invitingly dark. In the clip for “Exhumed” from the upcoming Okovi Nika Danilova channels The Ring with a shallow wooded grave escape and a multitude of VHS glitch effects provided by Corey Johnson. The song itself hits as hard as any of Danilova’s best – pounding, leaden beats push against the soaring cello work of Shannon Kennedy and over the it all Danilova’s voice beckons, an angel of destruction and redemption in one. It’s a powerful track and given the sense of loss that she’s exploring throughout this album, it winds up one of her most overtly powerful statements.

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