PhilPaine.com

I like this band from Perth, West­ern Aus­tralia, which pro­duces a clever update of six­ties psy­che­delia. I pos­sess their first EP, and first two stu­dio albums, Inner­s­peak­er (2010) and Loner­ism (2011). The psy­che­del­ic sound is now much mis­un­der­stood — lis­ten­ers today con­fuse it with glam-rock, ear­ly heavy met­al, and oth­er trends which were dis­tinct back in the six­ties and sev­en­ties. They even look like psy­che­del­ic bands actu­al­ly did, rather than the car­toon hip­pies imag­ined by the media. I think this band comes much clos­er to the intro­spec­tive, dream­like qual­i­ty that musi­cians back then achieved after drop­ping acid while camp­ing in the desert, or some such inspi­ra­tion. It’s a lit­tle more cal­cu­lat­ed and tech­no­log­i­cal­ly hip, but it’s at least in the same ball­park. There are plen­ty of mem­o­rable songs, with dis­tinct mood and char­ac­ter, in their cor­pus, so far: “Skele­ton Tiger” and “Half Full of Glass” on the EP; “Soli­tude Is Bliss”, “Lucid­i­ty”, “Expec­ta­tion” and “Why Won’t You Make Up Your Mind?” on Inner­s­peak­er; “Ele­phant” and “Feels Like We Only Go Back­wards” on Loner­ism. All three records are good, but Inner­s­peak­er appeals to me most. I can’t lis­ten to it with­out feel­ing like I’m wak­ing up on an emp­ty West­ern Aus­tralia surf­ing beach, after a night of hard par­ty­ing, with a philo­soph­i­cal twin­kle in my eye. Loner­ism is gloomi­er, with Aussie inno­cence shift­ing into Euro­pean artfulness.