Hooveriii

On their latest album, Los Angeles band Hooveriii have crafted their most crystalline vision of heady psych-pop yet. The group’s eponymous LP found them separating from their roots in similar prog bogs around town. The band holds members of Mind Meld, Jesus Sons, and fellow mind-expanders GROOP, but they also offer up plenty of appeal to fans of like-minded outfits like Frankie and the Witch Fingers, Meatbodies, Ty Segall,and Grave Flowers Bongo Band. The latter’s Gabe Flores joins the band on A Round of Applause. The last album let the band revel in the shagginess of psych and prog’s jam-laden history, rolling in riffs and enjoying the kind of filth that can be accumulated in a 10-minute fold-out. On Applause the band tightens and trims, they let the fat fall away and a sense of pop laser guide these songs through the dry ice haze.

Hoover and the band stitch these songs together into a Freon drenched quilt — iced neon glowing at the edges under a blacklight beam. The addition of Flores on guitar gives the album a kind of gleam that he’s been bringing to his own works. Sparring with Hoover, the two create an album that’s tossing fuzz leads against wall like Ginsu blades — slashing the speakers to pop shreds in the process. The glam splattered specter of the ‘70s holds on tight to the West Coast, but Hooveriii remain among those that are doing the genre justice in the modern era, letting metal, psych, prog and those platformed riffs reign down with a dayglo glory. The band’s never sounded like they’ve enjoyed an album this much, and that enthusiasm is addictive.