Brooklyn-based JOVM mainstays Psymon Spine released their third album, Head Body Connector last year. The album is a gritty, punchy, guitar-forward studio album from a band that’s long been obsessed with production. And perhaps more than its predecessors, their third album is explicitly informed and inspired by the band’s cathartic live show. “It’s more unhinged than anything we’ve made before,” Psymon Spine’s Noah Prebish says. “Throughout the writing process, we were always asking ourselves how we could make it really fun to play live.”
Ironically, the album, though ready-made to be performed, was mostly written in 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The band split their time between various home studios and friends’ back porches in Montauk, The Catskills, Boston and Brooklyn. It was fall and the crisp autumn air, and political uncertainty and disquietude looming in the background lended itself to an undeniable longing for companionship. “It felt like we had collectively jumped from one timeline to another, more bizarre one,” Prebish says.
The central theme of time being fractured, chopped and screwed is integral to the album’s material and its album art, which was designed by New York-based artist Bucky Boudreau and appears in the form of alternative measurements of passing seconds, minutes, days, lifetimes, tally marks on a chalkboard and infinity signs made of camp bracelets on a cracked egg.“Head Body Connector is our response to a world even more chaotic than usual,” says Peter Spears, “and an exploration of the little joys, anxieties, and absurdities that world has to offer.” While being an ode to the dissonance of temporality in our current moment, it’s also an elastic tribute to friendship and harmony in the face of that dissonance.
In the lead up to the album’s release, I wrote about:
“Boys,” a track that begins with a glistening New Wave-meets-post punk introduction before quickly morphing into a funky, synth-driven both with slashing guitars. The two seemingly disparate sections are held together with Sabine Holler’s dreamy delivery. But just under the infectious, danceable surface, is an introspective song that reveals a subtle sense of unease.
The track was written after the band’s Sabine Holler relocated to Berlin, but she still lends her voice to the song. “By nature every Psymon Spine song must be a little cheeky to bypass our own self-criticism, but in reality ‘Boys’ is just a very earnest song about friendship,” the band notes. “Early on in the pandemic Sabine moved back to Germany and we weren’t sure what was going to happen, either to us as a unit or to the entire world. We went to Peter’s childhood home in Boston for a few days and fleshed out a demo that Michael had started a couple weeks earlier. We sent it to Sabine who almost immediately replied with the same vocal take you hear on the song today.”
“Wizard Acid,” a woozy bit of disco funk built around a punchy bass line, glistening synth arpeggios and thumping beats paired with lyrics about coming apart at the seams — both literally and metaphorically. Consumed with cabin fever, the song’s narrator is slowly losing their mind.
The band told the folks at Flood Magazine that the song is “part allegory, part nonsense, encapsulating elements of cabin fever, dread and humor. We melded one of Michael’s early demos with one of Peter’s, creating one unholy coupling which eventually took the form of a shapeshifting disco jam. It sat instrumental for a couple months until Peter sent over some lyrics detailing a narrator slowly consumed by their sentient house, or perhaps losing their mind (maybe both?).”
The JOVM mainstays will be releasing Heady Remix Collector, a bold reimagining of the material off last year’s Head Body Connector. Slated for an April 4, 2025 release through their longtime label home Northern Spy, the album features remixes by some of their favorite artists and collaborators with the album’s tracks transformed into fresh, electrifying soundscapes that are perfect for both the dance floor and deep listening.
“We’re thrilled to share our most eclectic remix album yet: Heady Remix Collector. The name says it all,” the JOVM mainstays say. We asked 8 of our favorite artists to reinterpret songs on Head Body Connector and what we got back was a glimpse into how truly weird and brilliant our friends are.
We generally take a very hands-off approach to the remixes that we commission (the exception being “Love Injection’s Antimatter Kid Remix”, which Noah played guitar on); anytime we ask someone to remix something it’s because we love their work and want them to do their thing. We send out the stems, tell them to freak it, and in a couple months we find a bunch of alien babies on our doorstep.
“For the DJs, we’ve got club bangers from Sam O.B. and GIFT, as well as balearic slow burners from Love Injection and lovetempo. MGMT and Matt FX’s mixes are psychedelic, joyous, delirious. And both This is Lorelei and Disq’s remixes are a stroll through a funhouse, complete with trick mirrors and trap doors at every turn.”
The band shared the first peak of Heady Remix Collector, a double A-side single featuring MGMT’s remix of “Boys” and GIFT’s remix of “Wizard Acid.”
The MGMT remix of “Boys” pairs a chugging motorik-like groove, buzzing and crunchy guitars and twinkling synth oscillations with Holler’s dreamy delivery to create a dreamy and euphoric house music-meets-New Wave take on the original.
The GIFT remix of “Wizard Acid” turns the song into slick and glistening Echoes-era The Rapture/DFA Records dance punk-meets-house music banger with euphoric hooks.
If I were doing a DJ set, I’d play these bangers to get people moving — and if these tracks don’t get you moving, there’s something wrong with you.