Coloured Psalms At Sea

I heard this track 'Psalms' from A Constant Sea, the debut record from Brooklyn-based Heliotropes (out in June through Manimal Vinyl) and it floored me. True Widow parallels immediately swam to the surface, with the grungy undertones interspersed with , but this all-girl four-piece step out from the malaise with swathes of swampy psych sprawl. As if their electric cover of Roky Erickson's 'I Walked With A Zombie' last year wasn't enough indication, 'Psalms', the ozone-burning guitar solo makes your hair stand on end, all the better to tear it out as the band hit the accelerator and head for the brick wall as the song closes out. Jessica Numsuwankijkul's vocals are acid-sweet - providing disarming melody whilst emanating the slightest aura of menace. There is a vitality, a recklessness to this song that intimates that Heliotropes are overflowing with energy and a lack of sonic inhibitions - such freshness and enthusiasm burns away any hackneyed predispositions and instead presents pure, unadulterated rock (albeit of the distorted kind).

You can preorder A Constant Sea here. Heliotropes are playing the excellent 4Knots Festival in June, which pretty much namechecks all of Sonic Masala's favourite of-the-moment acts (Parquet Courts, The Men, The Babies, Marnie Stern, Reigning Sound, Kurt Vile) - and from the bubbling ecstasy generated from their fiery live performances, June cannot come fast enough.

Heliotropes - Psalms

Gayzeing On A Black Soul

 

One of the better random “discoveries” that Sonic Masala has made in the past eighteen months has been Idaho outfit TEENS (see my post here). And although they haven’t produced anything for a bit, leading member David W Wood has released a pretty damn fine EP under the guise of Gayze.



The seven tracks on Black Soul EP delves deeper into the mythology of the garage rock sound, injecting the squall and swagger that is often missing in today’s carbon copies. As such, songs like ‘Ain’t It Brave’ have that heady mix of hard-edge and desert psych that Roky Erickson excelled at and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club used to nail to the wall. Again, the lo-fi aesthetic suits these tracks, especially the reverberating isolation that informs plaintive (and surprisingly upbeat, considering the grimly excellent music video by the growing talent of Tyler T Williams (remember Youth Lagoon’s ‘Montana’?) that accompanies it) track ‘Done To My Love’ – although sometimes Wood’s drawled vocals are lost. That is a minor quibble though – Black Soul is an epic sounding 7”, tapping the seamier side of garage rock that was encapsulated by the leather-clad motorheads of the psych-fuelled 60s, and such a down and dirty sound is a welcome return. I hope this becomes more than a “thing” for Wood – there is an exciting electricity riding through these songs that alludes to something bigger (and darker) just around the corner…

You can get Black Soul through Bleeding Gold Records here.

Black Soul – Ain’t It Brave
Black Soul – Done To My Love