Comprised of Jack McEwan, Luke Parish, Danny Caddy and Luke Reynolds, the Perth, Australia-based quartet Psychedelic Porn Crumpets quickly developed a reputation in their native Australia for crafting enormous riff-based psych rock. Earlier this year, the members of the Perth-based psych rock outfit made their Stateside debut — and they managed to kick ass and take names with a series of acclaimed SXSW sets.
Building upon a rapidly growing international profile, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets’ latest album And Now For The Whatchamacalit was released earlier this year, and the album which was recorded between Jack McEwan’s bedroom and Perth, Australia-based Tone City Studios finds the band with a huge, arena rock-like sound, which also manages to represent their loftier ambitions. “The original concept was to take a 1930’s carnival that had been re-imagined for future generations, a collage of Punch and Judy, carousels and coconut shy’s that progresses in musical concepts and travels with the listener,” the band says of the album’s concept. “Then as we started traveling I was swept off into my own kind of circus, the odyssey of touring life. Large nights out, larger characters, drunken recollections of foreign cities and rabbit hole-ing into insanity.”
The album’s latest single “Hymn For A Droid” will further cement the band’s growing reputation for crafting riff-based psych rock, as the song is centered around enormous, arena rock friendly, power chord riffs and a motorik groove within an expansive song structure. Play this one as loud as possible and rock the fuck out, y’all.
“This track reminds me of a Rhino at full charge,” the band’s Jack McEwan explains in press notes. “I was absolutely cranking it while recording. Pretty sure my housemates didn’t get a lot of sleep the week this was being crafted. The lyrics were based on the end of a relationship, those months you’re questioning where your life will end up and if you’re making the right decisions. You’re almost robotic, ticking along like a drone that repeats the same lines over and over in your head, and then you go out with your mates for the first time in ages, take a bunch of thought juice and everything makes more sense. . I wanted the chorus to come out of nowhere like an instant realisation, confusing at first and then the next time you hear it all becomes way clearer.”
Directed by Ashley Rommelrath and Oliver Jones and filmed by Rommelrath and Gareth Goodlad, the recently released video for “Hymn For A Droid” was filmed during the band’s recent UK and European tour and features live footage from sets in Glasgow, Liverpool and All Points East Festival. And while being a display of a band that has become a force of nature that destroys stages and enraptures fans, it’s a lysergic romp, thanks to animation from Oliver Jones that turns guitars into beasts, moshing fans into skeletons and so on. Live shows can be a furious, sweaty and joyous endeavor and this video accurately captures that.
