Tag: psych rock

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: jjuujjuu Shares Hazy “Up To You”

Phil Pirrone is a Los Angeles-based musician and co-founder of Desert Daze. After spending the previous decade of his life as a touring bassist, Pirrone borrowed and SG and DL4 and began his exploration of writing and recording looped-based music with jjuujjuu back in 2011.

Pirrone’s jjuujjuu debut, 2013’s FRST EP and the follow-up, one-off single “Bleck” helped to build up some early buzz around the project. In the project’s earliest days, the lineup and instrumentation moved in step with Pirrone’s ethos of ephemera and flux: the project would turn in several different configurations with Pirrone at the center.

Building upon a growing profile, Pirrone and company shared stages with a number of nationally and internationally known acts, including The Claypool Lennon Delirium, Tortoise, Allah-Lahs, Temples, Tinariwen and a list of others. 

Pirrone spent the next few years recording material in various spaces around California. Those sessions included collaborations with Vinyl Williams, members of Lumerians, Dahga Bloom and a list of others. The material from those sessions eventually comprised Pirrone’s jjuujuu full-length debut, 2018’s Zionic Mud. The album was accompanied by alternate versions of its tracks remixed or reimagined by many of the band’s most notable fans and supporters, including J. Mascis, Warpaint‘s jennylee, Liars, METZ, and Autolux. JJUUJJUU supported the album by opening for Primus, Mastodon, Kikagaku Moyo, and Earhtless, as well as festival sets at Pickathon, Nelsonville, M3F and others. 

During the height of the pandemic, Pirrone taught himself how to produce and record material and sent tracks to longtime bandmembers and collaborators Ian Gibbs and Joseph Assef. Those tracks were sent to a collection of talented friends that included METZ’s Alex Edkins and JOVM mainstays Boogarins and a lengthy list of others. 

Pirrone and company started off the year with “SOME,” a collaboration with acclaimed Brazilian psych rock outfit and JOVM mainstays Boogarins. Built around a hypnotic motorik groove and layers of swirling and howling feedback and reverberated distortion. Boogarins added a dreamy bridge and vocals that seem that oscillating between English and their native Brazilian Portuguese, which gives the song a dreamy, psilocybin-fueled, hallucinogenic air. 

Tracked remotely between Los Angeles and Brazil between 2020-2021, Pirrone says: “We sent the track to Boogarins, who added a really beautiful bridge to the song, and vocals oscillating between English and Portuguese. Something in this song recalls early childhood memories of Muppet Babies or Elton John ‘Benny and the Jets’… but in a really weird (but good) way. End result feels like a flower dancing on the sand under a São Paolo sun.”

To celebrate the project’s debut at Coachella, Pirrone shares the latest jjuujjuu single “Up To You.” Anchored around swirling and shimmering feedback-driven guitar textures, a sinuous and propulsive bass line paired with wobbling layers of percussion, the song’s arrangement serves as a lush yet subtly uneasy bed for Pirrone’s reverb-drenched and dreamily yearning delivery to add to the psilocybin fueled haze.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Population II Shares Woozy and Fiery “Comme tu le souhaites (Ding Dong)”

Acclaimed Montréal-based psych rock outfit Population II — Pierre-Luc Gratton (vocals, drums), Tristan Lacombe (guitar, keys) and Sébastien Provençal (bass) — can trace their origin back a long way and are inextricably linked to their teenage memories. After years of jamming to the point of developing a unique sense of telepathy, the trio began recording independently releasing material that caught the attention of Castle Face Records head and The Oh Sees‘ frontman John Dwyer, who released the band’s full-length debut, 2020’s À la Ô Terre, an album that saw the band displaying their mastery of improvised and sophisticated composition. 

The Montréal-based psych outfit then spent the better part of the next two years touring to support their full-length debut, which included stops at SXSW, Pop Montréal, Toronto, NYC, and Québec City. 

Population II signed with Bonsound‘s label, booking and publishing arms. Bonsound released the French Canadian trio’s l Èthier-produced sophomore album Èlectrons libres du québec late last year. Èlectrons libres du québec is much more straightforward than its predecessor and showcases their remarkably adept musicianship and furthers their unique take on heavy psych rock, which features feverish punk rhythms, early punk energy bursts, hints of jazz philosophy and al love of minor scales informed by heavy metal’s early roots.

Èlectrons libres du québec received praise on both sides of the Atlantic from the like son Rock & Folk, Exclaim!, La Presse, Le Devoir and long list of others. And adding to a breakthrough year for the Montréal-based outfit, they also won a Breakthrough of the Year Award at last year’s GAMIQ ceremonies. 

Building upon a breakthrough 2023, the French Canadian JOVM mainstays will be releasing Èlectrons libres du québec‘s highly-anticipated follow-up Serpent Échelle EP. Slated for a Friday release through Bonsound, the EP, which will be released on a limited-edition cassette tape and on all digital platforms, sees the band crafting crating material that stands out from their previously released work: Shifting between orchestrated passages and lysergic riffage without warning, the EP’s material is wilder, more adventurous and heavier. Rooted in their remarkable compositional skills, the material displays a newfound commitment to songwriting. 

Thematically, the material touches upon the desperate urgency of life in the age of global doom while still enjoying life’s small pleasures — love, friendship, wine, good tunes and the like. 

The album also features violin from their acclaimed friend and producer Emmanuel Éthier. 

In the lead up to the EP’s release later this week, I wrote about the previous released single “R.B.” Beginning with a gorgeous string intro and an angular and propulsive bass line paired with a rapid paced hi-hat driven bit of percussion, the song quickly explodes into scorching riffage around the 35-45 second mark. Throughout the song’s run, it alternates between breathtaking beauty and scorching power chords. Gratton’s plaintive croon darts in and out of a lysergic and deceptively anachronistic arrangement that sounds as though it could have been released sometime between 1967-1973.

The EP’s latest single “Comme tu le souhaites (Ding Dong)” was written on the spur of the moment, right before its recording and was recorded during the Electrons libres du québec sessions. Reportedly one of the most self-referential tracks of their growing catalog, the song’s lyrics allude to a number of anecdotes and tales of events that they experienced in the stood while paying loving tribute to their dedicated sound engineer, Trevor Turple.

Much like its immediate predecessor, “Comme tu le soulhaites” is anchored around a mind-bending and woozy arrangement held together by a propulsive rhythm section that draw some inspiration from Miles Davis’ On the Corner Sessions paired with some prog rock-like keys and some forceful, scorching riffage. Throughout Gratton’s vocal alternates between singing and cooing.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: GIFT Ruminates on Mortality in Brooding “Wish Me Away”

Brooklyn-based psych rock quintet GIFT — TJ Freda (vocals, guitar), multi-instrumentalist Jessica Gurewitz, Kallan Campbell (bass), multi-instrumentalist Justin Hrabovsky and Gabe Camarano (drums) — formed just before the COVID-19 pandemic, and recorded their remarkably self-assured full-length debut 2022’s Momentary Presence during pandemic associated lockdowns and isolation.

Inspired by Ram Dass’ 1971 spiritual guide and countercultural landmark Be Here Now, Momentary Presence was a meditation on working through the anxiety and self-doubt that we all, at some point or another, carry. Specifically conceived, written and recorded with the idea of a full-length album being a fully contained work of art, the songs on Momentary Presence reportedly tease something seismic coming around the corner, while featuring dense layered productions that feel and sound self-assured, complete, definitive and impermeable. This is rooted in the band’s belief that each moment has richness, complexity and singularity. And once it’s gone, it can’t be recaptured or repeated. 

The album asks the listener several key questions: Can you truly be present? Can you open yourself up and appreciate life in its fullness — the ugliness and confusion, as well as the beauty and joy? The members of GIFT believe that the listener can. And their full-length debut is a chronicle of that chase, and a celebration of the eternal now. 

Sonically, the album saw the band establish an uncanny knack for crating soundscapes that are simultaneously turbulent and gorgeous rooted in a dizzying blend of early shoegaze, 90s alt rock and even modern pop that quickly caught the attention of listeners here in the States, across Europe and elsewhere.

The rising Brooklyn-based JOVM mainstays signed to Captured Tracks, who just released the quintet’s newest single “Wish Me Away,” the first bit of new material from the band in over 18 months. Anchored around a dreamy and hook-driven shoegazer soundscape of glistening, reverb-drenched guitars, woozy synths and a motorik groove paired with propulsive rhythms serving as a lush bed for Freda’s plaintive falsetto, “Wish Me Away” is continuation of the overall aesthetic they established on Momentary Presence and a decided sonic push forward, showcasing where the band is going next. The song also sees the band exploring and expressing a complex array of emotions with a lived-in specificity.

“‘Wish Me Away’ is about giving into the feeling of everything slipping away,” GIFT’s TJ Freda explains. “Just take it all away, put me out of my misery, wish me away. While this all seems daunting and sad, there’s a feeling of optimism in this song, holding on for dear life and refusing to give up hope.”

After nearly losing a loved one, Freda found himself grappling with the fleeting nature of life, and understandably with the inevitability of mortality. “‘Wish Me Away,’ ruminates on the fear and freedom that can come knowing it can all slip away. The line ‘wish me away’ kept coming up, as in ‘take me, not them,'” Freda adds.

Directed by Andrew Gibson, the accompanying video is a woozily surrealistic fever dream that takes place in the sort of mansion that would be the perfect setting of an Edgar Allan Poe novel. But throughout there’s an uneasy sense of mortality and the fleeting nature of life.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: JOVM Mainstay MAGON Shares Pixies-Esque “Solem Sequi”

Over the past handful of years, I’ve spilled a copious amount of virtual ink covering the remarkably prolific, Israeli-born singer/songwriter, musician and JOVM mainstay MAGON. After the release of his fifth album, 2022’s A Night in Bethlehem, the Israeli-born artist, along with his partner relocated to Costa Rica, where he continued his ongoing prolific period with three more albums, 2022’s Enter By The Narrow Gate, last year’s Did You Hear the Kids? and Chasing Dreams.

Chasing Dreams saw the JOVM mainstay collaborating with local indie rock outfit Las Robertas, who acted as his backing band for the recording sessions. Sonically, the album continued a slow-burn expansion of his sound with the incorporation of string arrangements, which add a lush and dreamily cinematic quality to the material. 

The JOVM mainstay’s recently released eighth album The Writing’s On The Wall is a bit of a return to form — but while continuing to push his sound in new directions: According to the JOVM mainstay, the material is a fusion of hallucinogenic re-imaginings of 70s soft rock, oddball outsider jams and laid-back indie fare.

Earlier this year, I wrote about the album’s first single “Breakthrough Blitz,” which sees MAGON pairing his laconic and easy-going delivery with a simple yet propulsive backbeat, glistening keys and a bluesy, Keith Richards-like guitar riff with a big hook. Thematically, the song touches upon the freedom and connection found in simple, everyday moments with the sort of contented sigh that can only comes from someone, who has lived a full and messy-life — and understands that he is truly very lucky. 

The Writing’s On The Wall‘s second and latest single “Solem Sequi” is Pixies-esque track anchored around a looping, strummed guitar melody, MAGON’s laconic delivery singing dreamily introspective lyrics paired with his uncanny knack for crafting enormous hooks.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Population II Shares Mind-bending “R.B.”

Acclaimed Montréal-based psych rock outfit Population II — Pierre-Luc Gratton (vocals, drums), Tristan Lacombe (guitar, keys) and Sébastien Provençal (bass) — can trace their origin back a long way and are inextricably linked to their teenage memories.

After years of jamming to the point of developing a unique sense of telepathy, the trio began recording independently releasing material that caught the attention of Castle Face Records head and The Oh Sees‘ frontman John Dwyer, who released the band’s full-length debut, 2020’s À la Ô Terre, an album that saw the band displaying their mastery of improvised and sophisticated composition. The Montréal-based psych outfit then spent the better part of the next two years touring to support their full-length debut, which included stops at SXSW, Pop Montréal, Toronto, NYC, and Quebec City. 

Population II signed with Bonsound‘s label, booking and publishing arms. Bonsound released the French Canadian trio’s l Èthier-produced sophomore album Èlectrons libres du québec late last year. Èlectrons libres du québec‘s much more straightforward than its predecessor and continues to showcase their remarkably adept musicianship with material that sees them effortlessly balancing between challenging compositions and memorable melodies and hooks. Sonically, the material also continues their unique take on heavy psych rock with feverish punk rhythms, early punk energy bursts, hints of jazz philosophy and a love of minor scales informed by heavy metal’s early roots. 

In the lead-up to the album’s release, I wrote about four of its singles:

  • “Beau baptême,” a song built around a fairly traditional and recognizable song structure — verse, chorus, verse, bridge, coda — that’s roomy enough for buying power chord-driven riffs and mind-melting grooves paired with Gratton’s ethereal crooning. The song sees the trio deftly balancing jazz-inspired improvisational sensibilities with the tight restraint of a deliberately crafted composition. The song explores the psychological journey around inspiration and focuses on the very genesis of ideas — namely how ideas are actually born and the opinions they generate. Throughout the song, the band’s Pierre-Luc Gratton sings about how writing can sometimes happen with ease and spontaneity and sometimes requires deep, long reflection. Fittingly, the song is rooted in a lived-in specificity.

  • “C.T.Q.S,” a song that begins with a driving rhythm, dissonant 70s jazz fusion/prog rock organ with a slightly menacing, off-kilter vibe and a relentless punk rock-like urgency before veering into a krautrock-meets-psych ripper around the song’s halfway point. Featuring tongue-in-cheek lyrics, the band’s Gratton taunts those who are too passive and have surrendered in the face of the world’s current, turbulent state. “‘C.T.Q.S’. is the manifestation of the tribulations of the past among today’s youth,” the Montréal-based trio explain. “It’s the calm after the storm, the law of suburbia, the boomer’s victory lap. It’s searching the ‘Local business” category on Amazon.”

  • “Pourquoi qu’on dort pas,” which sees the trio quickly locking into a scuzzy and forceful  Stooges-like groove with dreamy and campy bursts of organ paired with Gratton’s dreamy falsetto. Caribou‘s and Born Ruffians‘ Colin Fisher contributes some forceful saxophone lines, which manage to add soulful harmony and chaotic dissonance to the affair. The result manages to evoke the fuzziness of brain fog and detachment. With a title that translates into English as “Why Aren’t We Sleeping,” “Pourquoi qu’on dort pas” can trace its origins to a number of late-night strolls through the streets of Montréal’s Ahuntsic neighborhood. “During the time we wrote that song, Pierre-Luc (singer/drummer) used to go running at night when he couldn’t sleep, explains the trio. As the flora and fauna of Ahuntsic is very diverse, he often came across geese.” Fittingly, the song thematically explores birds as symbolic figures. 

  • The album’s third single, album opening track “Orlando” is a scuzzy Black Sabbath-like ripper rooted around some blazing and remarkably dexterous guitar work, woozy and arpeggiated keys paired with Gratton’s punchy delivery and the trio’s uncanny knack for crafting trippy, mind-bending grooves. 

The album garnered praise on both sides of the Atlantic from the likes of Rock & Folk, Exclaim!, La Presse, Le Devoir and long list of others. The band also won a Breakthrough of the Year Award at last year’s GAMIQ ceremonies.

The acclaimed Montréal-based outfit are quickly following up with Serpent Échelle EP. Slated for an April 19, 2024 through Bonsound, the EP which will be released on a limited-edition cassette tape and on all digital platforms, sees the band crafting crating material that stands out from their previously released work: Shifting between orchestrated passages and lysergic riffage without warning, the EP’s material is wilder, more adventurous and heavier. Rooted in their remarkable compositional skills, the material displays a newfound commitment to songwriting.

Thematically, the material touches upon the desperate urgency of life in the age of global doom while still enjoying life’s small pleasures — love, friendship, wine, good tunes and the like.

The album also features violin from their acclaimed friend and producer Emmanuel Éthier.

Serpent Échelle‘s first single “R.B.” begins with a gorgeous string intro and an angular and propulsive bass line paired with a quick-paced hi-hat driven bit of percussion before scorching riffs explode around the 35-45 second mark. The song spends it run alternating between breathtaking beauty and scorching power chords. Gratton’s plaintive croon darts in and out of a lysergic and deceptively anachronistic arrangement that sounds as though it could have been released sometime between 1967-1973.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

With the release of 2014’s critically applauded mini-album/EP Traitement Deuxluxe, Montréal-based psych rock duo Les Deuxluxes — vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Anna Frances and multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Etienne Barry — quickly exploded in their native Québec. Building upon a rapidly growing profile across the province, the duo followed up with their critically applauded full-length debut, 2016’s Springtime Devil.

Continuing upon that momentum, the French Canadian duo released a French translation of Springtime Devil album title track “Springtime Devil,” “Diable du pringtemps.” The band supported their efforts by making their way across the provincial festival circuit with stops at Montréal Jazz Fest, Festival d’été de Québec, Pop Montréal and M for Montréal. They’ve also opened for Lisa LeBlanc, Marjo, and Jon Spencer among others. They closed out 2016 with a mini-tour of South America that included stops in Santiago, Chile, Valdivia, Chile, Buenos Aires and São Paulo.

The duo isolated themselves in a 19th century church in the remote Québec countryside to write and record 2020’s sophomore album, Lighter Fluid. The album featured material anchored around classic and beloved, power chord riffage and classic psych rock vibes that channeled the likes of AC/DC, White Mystery, The White Stripes and on and on.

Throughout their run together, they’ve also collaborated with a handful of boundary-pushing acts across the province, including ALIAS, Larynx and others. But this year, sees the Montréal-based duo in a period of reinvention: They founded their own label Noble Shit Records, which will release their future releases, including their forthcoming four-song EP, Pleasure Doing Business — and guarantee them much more creative freedom.

Slated for an April 19, 2024 release, the entirely self-produced effort will feature the duo’s latest single “Always on the Run,” a collaboration with fellow Montréal-based rock outfit Les Shirley — Raphaëlle Chouinard, Lisandre Bourdages and Sarah Dion. “Always on the Run” further cements Les Deuxluxes’ swaggering hook-driven, barroom blues take on psych rock — but the addition of Les Shirley add a bit of playful pop-leaning muscle to the proceedings.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Sunglaciers Share Punchy Post Punk Ripper “Fakes”

Regular Nature, Calgary-based post-punk/psych pop outfit and JOVM mainstays Sunglaciers‘ highly-anticipated third album is slated for a March 29, 2024 release through Montréal-based label Mothland. While the material sees the band further continuing to blur the boundaries between polished melodcism and opaque experimentation, the material also blurs the lines between auspicious Romanticism and unbridled dissent. Firmly anchored in the strange and uneasy reality of our time, the album’s songs are laced with a certain optimism, through well-calculated psych elements and vibrant rhythms, creating a unique strange of kaleidoscopic pop.

Continuing their ongoing collaboration with co-producer Chad Van Gaalen, the Calgary-based JOVM mainstays’ forthcoming third album was purposely designed to be enjoyed in many ways, from solitary headphone listening to a crowded live venue, while sonically seeming to nod at Deerhunter, Ought, MGMT, DEVO, Talking Heads and others. The album also features a guest spot from acclaimed Zoon creative mastermind Daniel Monkman. 

“We wanted to make a concise yet explosive record, continuing to find the balance between familiar and novel sounds and approaches. We have not and may never make ‘dance music,’ but we make continued efforts to bring sounds that we like from dance and electronic genres into our own, delighting in the process as much as the product,” the band explains. “We love to play and experiment, defying expectations and discovering new sounds. This record shows how these novel (to us) elements interact with the rock and roll world we comfortably inhabit.

“We want to make you dance. We want to make you think. We want to make you think while you’re dancing and dance while you’re busy thinking. This is an album for the body, brain and heart. It’s compassionate, frustrated, communal and dreadful. In a world of information overload, where everything comes at you at once, Regular Nature is trying to normalize the phenomenon. This is chaotic music for a chaotic world, a three-way conversation between outer self, the subconscious and the mad world. As expressed on penultimate track ‘One Time or Another:’ ‘There’s always somebody talking.’”“We wanted to make a concise yet explosive record, continuing to find the balance between familiar and novel sounds and approaches. We have not and may never make ‘dance music,’ but we make continued efforts to bring sounds that we like from dance and electronic genres into our own, delighting in the process as much as the product,” the band explains. “We love to play and experiment, defying expectations and discovering new sounds. This record shows how these novel (to us) elements interact with the rock and roll world we comfortably inhabit.

“We want to make you dance. We want to make you think. We want to make you think while you’re dancing and dance while you’re busy thinking. This is an album for the body, brain and heart. It’s compassionate, frustrated, communal and dreadful. In a world of information overload, where everything comes at you at once, Regular Nature is trying to normalize the phenomenon. This is chaotic music for a chaotic world, a three-way conversation between outer self, the subconscious and the mad world. As expressed on penultimate track ‘One Time or Another:’ ‘There’s always somebody talking.’”

Late last month, I wrote about “Cursed,” a woozy dream pop-meets-psych pop-meets-post-punk track that features glistening and fluttering synth arpeggios, a motorik rhythm section, an Avalon-era Roxy Music-like guitar solo and hazy and yearning vocals. The achingly nostalgic song sees its narrator discussing a love passing them by with a weary and bitterly resigned sense of regret. “Oh, if I had only known what I know now,” the song’s narrator seems to say. 

“‘Cursed’ is quite probably Sunglaciers’ biggest downer to date. It is a piece about shattered, unsaid expectations, and reflecting on the reality of a situation after it has passed, and all that remains is its memory,” the band explains. “It is a slow dance between regret and acceptance, a song about lost love and lost potential. It is being caught in a moment, blinded by short-term desires, only to wake up on the other side when everything has passed and it is too late to reconcile (“You wish your head could unremember this/ But memory is all there ever is”).

“Fakes,” Regular Nature‘s second and latest single is a Freedom of Choice-era DEVO and Remain in Light-era Talking Heads like ripper built around a relentless four-on-the-floor, angular chorus pedal-drenched baselines and squiggling guitars and atmospheric synths paired with Resnik’s punchily uneasy delivery and bursts of gossip and shit-talking. The song captures the inner monologue of someone struggling to keep up with appearances and with keeping up with others, while recognizing — with an excoriating sense of humor — that practically everything in our lives has a veneer of phoniness.

“‘Fakes’ is a song about performance, artifice, and image,” the Calgary-based outfit explains. “Partly a direct narration of a social scene, partly an inner monologue. It is about how our priorities have changed or are distorted. Instead of who we truly are, the importance seems to be on what we appear to be or how we act. Sometimes these intersect, but oftentimes are at odds. We are desperate to mold a certain self-image, a certain perception from the outside, despite what we really think about a situation. We run a risk of being seen as ‘all style, not a lot of substance.’ All social interactions are performative. We are striving to be seen as having a certain character, whether or not that’s who we truly are or how we believe we “ought” to be. ‘Fakes’ is like the subconscious taking over the controls of someone engaging in society (‘Don’t tell me your thoughts about the weather’), then abruptly turning its focus back inward (‘I’m anxious, always acting up’).”

Directed by the band’s Evan Resnik, the accompanying video is inspired and informed by 90s MTV/Muchmusic music video aesthetics, while also nodding at some of DEVO’s videos from the 80s. Featuring the band playing a sparse, white studio space, at points we see some uncanny mash-ups of their faces and bodies that seem startlingly real and unsettlingly weird.

“Everyone in the band grew up on the aesthetics of 90s MTV/Muchmusic, so it’s no surprise that many of our videos look like they belong to that era,” Resnik says. “When conceptualizing the ‘Fakes’ video, Mathieu (Blanchard) told me he wanted it to be our ‘Big Bang Baby,’ a music video by Stone Temple Pilots. I hadn’t seen the video in years, but the vibe is unforgettable. I freshened it up to fit our weirdness, and adjusted for our complete lack of budget. I tend to go off the rails during the editing process, so I spliced our faces to exaggerate the fakeness. And there are parallels to ‘Big Bang Baby’ that found their way in without my realizing (the old TV, neon colours in the bridge). I think Scott Weiland passed these elements to me from the great beyond.”