Chewing Pine

The Head Shop: Drugs in the ’60s

This disc from the Head Shop could be considered top-shelf psych, but the cover’s really cooler than some of the tracks included. Not bad, but not great either.

BLOGLOAD: Self Titled

Try a Dull Knife…in the Eye

Honestly, Try a Dull Knife isn’t really that great a tape – yeah, it’s a tape. But the inclusion of Cahuenga’s take on “Astronomy Domine” will not only scare the shit outta you, but make you wanna listen to the Screamers for a while.

Astronomy Domine: Download | Stream

Twink Gets Freeq’d Out

Despite how ridiculous this looks, it’s not. Everything from winding folk to heavy psych gets tossed together from a drummer that played with the Pretty Things, Hawkwind and some other bands that were capable of aurally create acid freeq outs. Why Think Pink wasn’t/isn’t huge is a mystery.  Take a gander.

Nirvana – “1999″ (Video)

Not the best concept album coming outta the ’60s, but Nirvana drinks to the year 1999 – there shall be no arguing with that.

Pugh Rogefeldt: A (Psych) Language Barrier

Despite not being able to understand what’s coming outta the mouth of Pugh Rogefeldt, this is still pretty boss…I like Dungen as well though…When dude at Biannual Haircut proclaims something, it might behoove us to listen…sometimes.

If you’re a bit reticent to hit up the flowery video, you’re Spidey sense has served you well. It’s a bit more fey than the poorly titled “Love, Love, Love.”

Ganglians Get in Shape for the Summer

Remember when everyone figured Merriweather Post Pavilion was the best album of the year in January? Yeah, it wasn’t then, but it’s certainly not after this. Ganglians are sunshine…and not in a lame way.

To June: Download | Stream

Wooden Shjips – Dos (Holy Mountain, 2009)

More heavy psych from the Bay….check EBX for the write up.

BLOGLOAD: Wooden Shjips – Dos

Sighque

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Bill DeArango: Clevo Jazz

Interestingly enough, Bill DeArango’s love of guitar pushed him through various eras of jazz and even into psych rock. He eventually lent his talents to some Cleveland locals in a group called Henry Tree. On the album Electric Holy Man (produced by Bob Shad of Mainstream Records fame), you can hear how DeArango was able move from the hard bop of Gillespie to the prog-rock of North-East Ohio.

There’s no use in my waxing about this gentleman – except he ran a music shop down the street from where I grew up. If you take a look HERE, you can find out all you need to know.

Religious Knives – The Door (Ecstatic Peace, 2008)

If one can look past the grand platitude that is the title of this disc, it holds a half an hour of often times ambient, psych inspired rock. The quartet recently released Resin in April on Brooklyn’s No Fun Productions. And while that disc possesses a tranquil psyche leaning, recording this new slab under the tutelage of Thurston Moore serves to differentiate the two releases. The Door begins to portray a weak penchant for song craft. One can attribute that new subtlety to the company the Religious Knives now keep or merely as an advancement – an exploration. Ambiance though is what the music of the Religious Knives strives for and that explains such lyrical shortcomings as, “You’re straight as a river.”

Given the sparse lyrical content and a tendency towards repetitive rock tropes, the group, and this disc specifically, will occasionally be categorized as experimental. Neither are. Religious Knives obviously draw from a wide range of psych influenced groups. Minimal would be a more apt adjective – it’s not minimalism, but The Door at points, as on the waltz of “On a Drive”, comes dangerously close.

What Religious Knives do well is work simplistically with the instrumentation that they have; which is to say, they’re set up in the fashion of a sixties rock group – organ and all. Being able to vary time signature (“The Storm”) allows the same instruments to take on various voicings to delineate one song from the next. Nate Nelson’s drumming moves from a motorhythmic style to a primitive thud – like the Cramps if they didn’t swing – over the course of the six tracks.

The band is sloppy even given the rhythm section perpetually being in sync. Hearing the introductory riff to “Basement Watch” recalls the Dead getting ready to jump into a blues number, but not being quite ready yet. That aspect to the Religious Knives though, shouldn’t deter new era psyche foragers. In comparing the Knives, its peers are evident: Psychic Ills and Wooden Shjips. But to limit a dissection of this band to that is simply dismissive. There is something sparklingly shambolic about the groans that these folks work out. And in the group’s evolution, listeners may find the Knives capable to craft a lyrical hook while holding onto the intangible elements of its sound.