The Roku Music roadshow has started – the album Collider is out, Sonic Masala Records is officially out of the gates, and the band have played their first brace of regional shows. It has been a whirlwind fortnight to be sure – but poor ol blog has been neglected in the meantime! My head is foggy thanks to a number of beers consumed in the Time Machine (one of Queensland’s best stores, hands down – get out to Nambour and check it out!) and some amazing Roku Music and Dreamtime-inspired noise, so I need a nice, smooth introduction to the week…and Atlanta’s Axxa/Abraxas is providing me with just that.
Out on Captured Tracks last week, this self-titled debut from Axxa/Abraxas (real name Ben Asbury) plays like Kurt Vile if he fronted Real Estate in the 60s and sang a good few octaves higher. There is a base element here, the paring back of all but the bare elements that makes up the DNA of psych pop – and whilst the flourishes like a guitar solo (which always shadows the background) exist, they aren’t given weight. There is a breathy weightlessness to these tracks that give Axxa/Abraxas a vintage quality, like stumbling over some dust-covered 8 track in the basement of the resident recluse, giving a sneak peak into what their life might have been like. ‘Painted Blue’ allows for a more open-ended psych flourish, but in the main the album remains at a sedate pace, an ebullient meander through sepia shadows. It almost makes working on a Monday bearable…
Axxa/Abraxas is out now.
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