Having first made his mark as a songwriter and guitarist for Los Angeles’ Allah-Las, Pedrum Siadatian has etched out a place of his own with his solo work as PAINT. After an eponymous debut in 2018, PAINT has now returned with the ambitious Spiritual Vegas – due July 10, 2020.
On Spiritual Vegas, Siadatian’s singular touch is unmistakable. Here we find an emboldened artist coloring outside the lines, unleashing an opus both idiosyncratic and focused – cohesion through diversity. The first single from the album is “Ta Fardah.”
“The song is an ode to 70s/80s Iranian melodrama, with a video depicting a man falling in love with a TSA agent,” Pedrum explains. “Quarantine resulted in a homemade metal detector and security screening room”.
Pre-order ‘Spiritual Vegas’ now to immediately receive 2 bonus tracks “A Short While” + “Ta Fardah (Instrumental)”
Spiritual Vegas Tracklist
01. Intro (Phor Phaedra) 02. Strange World 03. Grape St. 04. Lanolin 05. Flying Fox 06. Ta Fardah 07. Why Not, Tick Tock? 08. Meet Me (In St. Lucia) 09. Land Man 10. Tongue Tied 11. Ballad of Adelaide 12. Well Of Memory/ODAAT 13. Impressions 13. Outro (The Lines I Drew)
Dead Ghostsdon’t waste time on their latest record – Automatic Changer. The Canadian psychedelic outfit gets freaky right away with opening track “Freak,” which is heavy on trippy guitars and most of the vocals are heavily reverberated shouts.
The first single from the record, “Drugstore Supplies,” has a fun, fast buzz to it that sounds more San Francisco than Vancouver. “Swiping Hubcabs” seems to bend back upon itself as swingin’ 60’s organ sounds swell around you. The beats, harmonies, and guitars of “Holdin’ Me Down” are positively Beach Boys, but with a lot more fuzz – which is not a bad thing.
“Blackout” packs a loud punch and brings in garage rock elements to great effect, and the breakdown on it (complete, I think, with coughing from someone smoking too much…something) is outstanding. “You Got Away” keeps the garage rock coming, and “Turn It Around” brings in some psych-country to the mix. Check out that lead guitar if you don’t believe me. “Merle” keeps this flavor, but also adds some groovy hippy road music to the mix. It brings to mind images of driving down a sunny road in your shaggin’ wagon with all the windows down and the 8-track blaring.
The weird, warped guitars on “Jerry’s Dead” are as liquid and thick as lava lamp goo, and that addition of distant saxophone squawks is a great touch. The chugging riffs of “It’s Been Too Long” push that shaggin’ wagon’s pedal to the metal as they sing about missing a girl (“It’s been too long since I saw you…”). Is it coincidence that the next song is called “In and Out” (a euphemism for sex in A Clockwork Orange), or that the song lasts under two minutes?
The opening drum fill on “Tell Me How” is worthy of a disco track and then the song becomes a booming psych-surf track. The title track moves along like a rickety but dependable truck hauling a bunch of surfers to the beach or hippies to a love-in. “Bad Vibes” is surprisingly upbeat with surf riffs hopping around the forefront of it. It flows (or perhaps, “oozes” is a better way to describe it) into the aptly named final track, “Say Goodbye” – a short, spaced-out fuzzy jam.
It’s a fun record filled with groovy guitars, indiscernible lyrics, garage rock drums, and solid bass that will automatically change your mood when you hear it.
Rare Earth‘s third album, Ecology, picks up where Get Ready left off a year before it – with even more fuzzy funk that brings to mind the pinnacle of the hippie and psychedelic era.
“Born to Wander” is a great theme for the idea of chucking your day job, sticking it to the Man, and becoming a free spirit. Gil Bridges‘ flute solo on it is also a great touch. “Long Time Leavin'” was a big radio hit for the band, and it’s easy to see why. It’s both a nod toward young men being drafted in the military and going to Vietnam, possibly to never return (“I tried so yard, but we’re just livin’ in a grave.”), and toward youth culture at the time looking for something meaningful (“I’m been a long time gone searchin’ for my dreams.”). Kenny James‘ organ solo on the track is sharp, and the breakdown of the song into a brief, fuzzy psychedelic jam is groovy indeed.
Their cover of The Temptations‘ “(I Know) I’m Losing You” is legendary and elevates the original to places that blew people’s minds in 1970 and still does today. Bridges saxophone stabs during “Satisfaction Guaranteed” will get you moving, as will Pete Rivera‘s slick chops – which might be the best on the whole record.
Rod Richards turns up the fuzz on his guitar on “Nice Place to Visit” (written by bassist John Persh) and the band’s addition of Eddie Guzman on conga on this (and the entire album, really) is sharp. They go blend psychedelia and garage rock on “No. 1 Man,” with Richards playing to the moon and the band singing about winning a woman’s love. The album ends with their somewhat operatic cover of The Beatles‘ “Eleanor Rigby.” Rivera’s groove throughout it is rock solid and the additional lyrics of “Take a good look around. Tell me, what do you see? Everybody is lonely. Why must there be lonely people?” reflect the counter-culture movement of the time. The words still hold resonance today.
Like Get Ready, this is essential listening for lovers of psychedelic soul music and the last album with the band’s original lineup.
Keep your mind open.
[Why not wander over to the subscription box while you’re here?]
Rare Earth‘s Get Ready is their second album, but many consider it their first since it launched them into the stratosphere of popularity in the late 1960’s. The all-white psychedelic soul group signed to Motown was the first (and pretty much only) rock group to bring Motown hit records – to the point that Motown named it’s rock sub-label “Rare Earth” after the band (Gil Bridges – vocals, saxophone, and tambourine, Kenny James – vocals, organ, and piano, John Persh – vocals and bass, Rod Richards – vocals and guitar, and Pete Rivera – vocals and drums).
There are only six tracks on Get Ready, and all of them are good. I mean, the album did do Platinum-level sales, after all. It opens with “Magic Key” and Richards fuzzed-out guitar and Rivera’s wicked grooves and vocals about equality and mutual respect being the magic key to a better world. Their great cover of “Tobacco Road” is full of sweet solos: James’ great organ riffs, Bridges’ sax work, Rivera’s vocals that bring out the blues and don’t try too hard, and Richards’ quick, trippy solo is top-notch.
Rivera’s groove on their cover of Traffic‘s “Feelin’ Alright” is so tight that it could perform in a military parade. The funky, trippy “In Bed” is both a tribute to shagging and to life and death. Persh’s bass on “Train to Nowhere” is deceptively wicked.
The standout track is, of course, the title track / cover of The Temptations‘ “Get Ready” – all twenty minutes of it. It begins with a spaced-out instrumental jazz-rock solo with Bridges’ saxophone taking front and center stage while Persh slowly builds up to the groove of the track and you realize you’re listening to a live recording that proceeds to race off at eight miles per hour. The bass and drum breakdown around the six-minute mark is killer. Richards gets to stretch his muscles as well for a wild space rock solo that flows perfectly into Bridges’ sax solo. All these solos last about thirteen minutes before blasting back into the chorus.
Get Ready is a fine mix of funk, soul, and psychedelia and essential listening for fans of those genres.
Khruangbin, the Houston-based group comprised of bassist LauraLeeOchoa, guitarist MarkSpeer, and drummer Donald “DJ” Johnson, are pleased to announce their new album, Mordechai, out June26th on Dead Oceans, in association with Night Time Stories. Mordechai comes two years after the release of their beloved and acclaimed breakthrough, 2018’sCon Todo El Mundo, and was preceded earlier this year by TexasSun, the group’s collaborative EP withLeonBridges. Today, they present the vibrant, Felix Heyes & Josh R.R. King-directed video for Mordechai’s lead single, “Time (You and I)”.
Khruangbin has always been multilingual, weaving far-flung musical languages like East Asian surf-rock, Persian funk, and Jamaican dub into mellifluous harmony. As a first for the mostly instrumental band, Mordechai features vocals prominently on nearly every song. It’s a shift that rewards the risk, reorienting Khruangbin’s transportive sound toward a new sense of emotional directness, without losing the spirit of nomadic wandering that’s always defined it. And it all started with them coming home.
By the summer of 2019, Khruangbin had been on tour for nearly three-and-a-half years, playing to ever-expanding audiences across North and South America, Europe, and southeast Asia in support of both Con Todo El Mundo and their 2015 debut, The Universe Smiles Upon You. They returned to their farmhouse studio in Burton, Texas, ready to begin work on Mordechai. But they were also determined to slow down, to take their time and luxuriate in building something together.
It’s a lesson Lee had recently learned with the help of a new friend, a near-stranger who had reached out when she was feeling particularly unmoored, inviting her to come hiking with his family. That day, as they’d all made their way toward the distant promise of a waterfall, Lee had felt a dawning clarity about the importance of appreciating the journey, rather than rushing headlong toward the next destination. When they reached the waterfall at last, Lee’s friend urged her to jump, a leap she likens to a baptism. As she did, he screamed her name—her full name, the one she’d recently taken from her grandfather. In that instant, Laura Lee Ochoa was reborn. She emerged feeling liberated, grateful for what her friend had shown her. His name was Mordechai.
Ochoa’s rejuvenation found its expression in words—hundreds of pages’ worth, which she’d filled over a self-imposed day of silence. As Khruangbin began putting together the songs that would make up Mordechai, discovering in them spaces it seemed like only vocals could fill, they turned to those notebooks. Khruangbin had experimented with lyrics before, but this time Ochoa had found she had something to say. Letting those words ring out gave Khruangbin’s cavernous music a new thematic depth.
Chief among those themes is memory—holding onto it, letting it go, naming it before it disappears. The sun-dappled disco of lead single “Time (You And I)” evinces the feeling of a festival winding down to its final blowout hours. Its accompanying video features comedian Stephen K. Amos and Lunda Anele-Skosana. The duo wander around London, placing singular sandcastles throughout the city’s various scenery.
Musically, the band’s ever-restless ear saw them pulling reference points from Pakistan, Korea, and West Africa, incorporating strains of Indian chanting boxes and Congolese syncopated guitar. But more than anything, Mordechai became a celebration of Houston, the eclectic city that had nurtured them, and a cultural nexus where you can check out country and zydeco, trap rap, or avant-garde opera on any given night. It is a snapshot taken along a larger journey—a moment all the more beautiful for its impermanence. And it’s a memory to revisit again and again, speaking to us now more clearly than ever.
Mordechai Tracklist: 1. First Class 2. Time (You and I) 3. Connaissais de Face 4. Father Bird, Mother Bird 5. If There is No Question 6. Pelota 7. One to Remember 8. Dearest Alfred 9. So We Won’t Forget 10. Shida
Released just a year after their split EP with Night Beats, The UFO Club (Christian Bland, Danny Lee Blackwell, and Skyler McGlothlin) took the four tracks they had on the EP and added seven more to create a spooky, trippy, solid album.
It starts with “July” – a song I once presented to a woman who described herself as “an original hippie.” She loved it. It’s hard not to love with its opening acoustic guitar chords, Blackwell’s heavily reverbed vocals, McGlothlin’s stumbling drunk beats, and Bland’s warped electric guitar. Their cover of The Ronettes‘ “Be My Baby” follows with its guitars that sound like a swarm of stoned bees. Blackwell is a known Bo Diddley fan (Night Beats often covers Diddley’s “Keep Your Big Mouth Shut” live), so their song “Bo Diddley Was the 7th Son” is a roaring, sweaty tribute to him. It almost sounds like they told McGloghlin to just go nuts on the drums, and he did.
“Wolfman” is another track from the EP that’s wild, crazy fun with Blackwell taking on the role of a werewolf and Bland and McGloghlin howling behind him. “Doubts” slows things down before we totally lose our minds. The sad organ and sorrowful drumming highlight Blackwell’s pleading vocals for love. “John the Cat” has such a swagger to it that it might topple your speakers and puts Bland’s love of early Pink Floyd on full display.
“Fuck shit up!” the band yells at the beginning of “Surf Shitty,” a dangerous track best suited for 1960’s juvenile delinquency film soundtracks. “Chapel” follows it. It’s a stand-out track on the EP as well as here. It’s fuzzed-out psychedelic bliss about inward meditation. “Up in Her Room” is over seven minutes of psychedelic garage rock with Blackwell singing about gettin’ his freak on in his girlfriend’s apartment. “Natalie” might be that girl up in the room. She’s a weird one if that’s the case because the song is a wild, organ-heavy freak-out that sounds like someone slipped something funky into the band’s tea at the recording studio. The closer, “Last Time,” is a short, warped version of the Rolling Stones‘ classic track.
Mild Anxiety, the new EP from Blue Canopy starts off sounding like a warped record of a 16-bit video game and then beautifully transforms into a psych-synth treat that seemed tailor-made to ease the anxiety mentioned in the title.
That first track is “Keys to the Garden,” which floats along with funky guitars, smooth drumming, and synths that sound like sunlight bouncing off a garden pond. It’s a song about opening yourself to new possibilities, maybe even enlightenment (“I can’t believe you’ve never been to the garden. You’ve got the keys so come on through.”)
“656” was the first single off the EP, and it reminds me of New Pornographers tracks in its instrumentation and back-and-forth male-female vocals about coming to the realization that a relationship is at an end (“There’s nothing left for you in this. Your wings are barely fluttering. Now that you are over it, what’s the point of bickering? I know it’s not enough.”).
“St. Albans” has lead singer/ keyboardist Alex Schiff lamenting a relationship, possibly the one that just ended or one that he knew was a lost cause from the start, along a jaunty Randy Newman-like beat while he sings, “I was overwhelmed by you. Had we gone for a walk, you’d bum a cigarette. We would never survive, in my self-defense.” “Always” is drenched in psychedelic guitars that embolden Schiff to face the end (“I know what this is, and I know what to do. I will not run.”). The end of a relationship? Life? The EP? I don’t know. It’s probably all of that and more.
This is a lovely EP that tackles some heavy stuff without bludgeoning you over the head with symbolism and angst. Take a few moments to lounge with it.
“Filled with childlike wonder and bright-eyed instrumentation that could just as easily be a symphony as a rock band, ‘656’ sets the stage, suggesting that Schiff’s future as Blue Canopy is as bright as he could hope for.” — PopMatters
“A psychedelic pop sound that blends contemporary indie psychedelia in the vein of Tame Impala with ’60s-era aesthetics similar to those of Zombies or early Pink Floyd. It takes you somewhere distant yet familiar, lush yet accessible.” — Treble
Portland band Blue Canopy share a new single from their forthcoming debut today via Treble. The band is led by former Modern Rivals keyboardist/singer and co-songwriter Alex Schiff (Pitchfork‘s accolades HERE.) Hear & share “Keys To The Garden” HERE. (Direct Bandcamp.)
PopMatters previously launched the animated video for lead single “656” HERE. (Direct YouTube.)
Blue Canopy‘s Mild Anxiety is the debut EP from Portland-based multi-instrumentalist, Alex Schiff. Under the Blue Canopy moniker, Alex combines versatile songwriting chops and timeless, exuberant melodies to comprise four distinct pieces that utilize nostalgia as a force to move forward.
Formerly the keyboardist and co-writer for indie band, Modern Rivals, Alex has shared the stage with bands such as Ra Ra Riot, Stars, and The Black Keys. The EP’s lead single, “656” enlists the four other members of Modern Rivals (performing drums, guitar, bass, synth and backup vocals) as an official send-off to a relationship that was a formative part of Alex’s youth and time living in New York City. Mild Anxiety was co-produced by Patrick J Smith (A Beacon School/Modern Rivals). The EP will be released April 17th on Fat Possum label offshoot Grind Select. Pre-orders are available HERE.
This eight-song EP is split between bands hailing from Austin, Texas and Seattle, Washington. Side A is four tracks by Austin’s The UFO Club (who would go on to release a full album a year later – review coming soon). Side B is one of the first official recordings of Seattle’s Night Beats – even before their first full album was released by Austin’s Reverberation Appreciation Society label.
The UFO Club melds Austin and Seattle together by combining the powers of The Black Angels‘ Christian Bland and Danny Lee Blackwell of Night Beats (both sharing duties on guitar, vocals, farfisa, drums, bass) and producer / bassist / organist Skyler McGlothlin to create a heady brew of Pink Floyd, 13th Floor Elevators, Phil Spector, and Howlin‘ Wolf.
“(My Love Is) Waiting” is a pleading love song with Blackwell’s distinctive voice calling out in soulful wails while crystalline guitars surround him. “Chapel (in My Mind)” is an instant stand-out with creeping fuzz bass, spooky drums, and haunted house guitars as Bland sings about engaging in self-introspection and not caring what others think of the idea. You’ll want “Wolfman” on every Halloween-themed playlist you create from now on, as it’s a fun, rocking track with Blackwell trying to keep his lover calm as he transforms into a monster and Bland and McGlothlin howl and bay in the background. Side A ends with their power drill-fuzzy cover of The Ronettes‘ “Be My Baby.”
Side B is all Night Beats, consisting of the original lineup (Blackwell on vocals and guitar, Tarek Wegner on bass, James Traeger on drums). It opens with one of my favorite Night Beats tracks, “Hex,” a trippy psychedelic cut that has Blackwell’s opening guitar riffs hitting you like black helicopters coming over the horizon. “A Night with Nefertiti” brings Wegner’s bass to the forefront and makes the vocals a bit sleepy (in a good way). The Egyptian theme continues on the funky “Drowning in the Nile” (which includes some wild harmonica work by Blackwell). The closer is “18 Glowing Phantoms.” Blackwell’s acoustic guitar takes on a tribal sound as he sings about being taken to an otherworldly dark forest to learn he has no soul. Creepy? Yes. Good? Absolutely (especially at the break-down).
This split 10″ EP was a good warm-up for both The UFO Club’s self-titled album a year later and Night Beats’ first full record. It’s a fine addition to any collection of net-psychedelic music.
Keep your mind open.
[Why not float over to the subscription box while you’re here?]
“Their journey still occasions wonder and awe. For so many years, it was hardly told. Here it is, in pictures and words. This is the way, step inside.” – Jon Savage
13th Floor Elevators: A Visual History, written and curated by Paul Drummond and published by Anthology Editions, will be released April 21st, and is available for preorder now. Direct orders of the book through the Anthology website will be shipped immediately. 13th Floor Elevators: A Visual History tells the complete and unvarnished story of a band, which, until now, has been thought of as tragically underdocumented. Drummond has spent years amassing an unprecedented archive of primary materials, including scores of previously-unseen band photographs, rare and iconic psychedelic artworks, and more. A full list of visual assets can be found below.
Born out of a union of club bands on the burgeoning Austin bohemian scene and a pronounced taste for hallucinogens, the 13th Floor Elevators formed in late 1965 when lyricist Tommy Hall asked a local singer named Roky Erickson to join up with his new rock outfit. Four years, three official albums, and countless acid trips later, it was over: the Elevators’ pioneering first run ended in a dizzying jumble of professional mismanagement, internal arguments, drug busts, and forced psychiatric imprisonments.
In their short existence, however, the group succeeded in blowing the lid off the budding musical underground, logging early salvos in the countercultural struggle against state authorities, and turning their deeply hallucinatory take on jug-band garage rock into a new American institution called psychedelic music. Before the hippies, before the punks, there were the 13th Floor Elevators: an unlikely crew of outcast weirdo geniuses who changed culture. 13th Floor Elevators: A Visual History places the band finally and undeniably in the pantheon of innovators of American rock music to which they have always belonged.
13th Floor Elevators: A Visual History Visual Assets: ● Rare photos, including many newly-discovered color shots ● Family scrapbook photos and clippings ● Photography and ephemera from the band’s friends, a who’s-who of the 1960s Austin arts scene ● Stills from the band’s television appearances ● Contemporary newspaper and underground press clippings covering the band’s rise (and fall) ● Materials from the books that inspired the band’s unique iconography ● Internal documents from the band’s label International Artists documenting the disastrous business side of the Elevators’ career in detail ● Materials relating to the band’s legal troubles, from handwritten drug deal letters to Austin Police Department surveillance photos to mugshots and draft cards ● The most complete collection of show flyers and handbills ever assembled, including many rare alternate printings of iconic psychedelic posters
About the Author: Paul Drummond is a renowned antiquarian bookseller based in London. He has spent years documenting every aspect of the history of the 13th Floor Elevators, and is the author of Eye Mind (2007), the exhaustive and definitive biography of the band.
