Dropping Out From Radiation

This one has been played incessantly for months, and sitting around for me to post about it so long that another release has already come and gone also! So it is with Apache Dropout, whose self-titled LP made my top albums list for last year. The Indiana three-piece hit on angular garage punk with some mainlined psych fuzz and some Jagerbombs to boot - these guys are the gas. It really is a rip-roaring release, and 'Teenager' just plainly kills...



Apache Dropout - Teenager

Then along comes Radiation a three song taster that is just as good albeit much shorter in length. Put out through Mexican Summer, it heightens the psych motorik preamble, yet somehow remains coherent and concise. A lovely surprise of the smokiest order.



Apache Dropout - Radiation
Apache Dropout - School Girl

But they aren't slacking off. Trouble In Mind are releasing a 4-way split 7" that the band did with the excellent Mikal Cronin (another I missed out on posting about last year - his album is just as rad), The Paperhead and Liminanas for the upcoming Record Store Day. Keep up the mind-melting work, lads.

Sons Of Stone

I havent really had anything going around the record player from great label HoZaC Records lately, which I thought strange - then I received this little cracker. Sons Of Stone is the debut LP for a Michigan band called The People's Temple (nice connection to Jim Jones, love it!). This is similar to The Paperhead record I harped on about last week in that the sound these guys have mastered is so steeped in vintage late 60s/early 70s psych folk rock that its hard to fathom this album not coming out of a time capsule, alongside Marty McFly's Almanac (although that was in 1955 - but time travel is a finicky thing...). This is psych rock at its most languid and lethargic, laying serpentine grooves over tracks like 'Sons Of Stone' and 'Led As One' Just when you thought it could be ground down any further, along comes 'Sons Of Stone Revisited'... Yet the best part about these tracks is that there are riffs here, riffs that will latch on to you for days. Yet this isnt a epic listen - with fourteen tracks on here creating an album of 40 or so minutes, and with lots of variety in amongst the throwback jams. But its not just that that makes this essential listening - its the vitality of it. A lot of bands mining the back catalogues of yesteryear sound like retreads - The People's Temple sound like they are actually living it. And they are two sets of brothers, who may or may not be telekinetically linked. Either way, forget about the Followill's - along with Pontiak's Carney Bros, Ill follow this People's Temple into the jungle and gulp down the Kool Aid...


The People's Temple - Sons Of Stone

Harking Back To The Paperhead

The Paperhead are a Nashville collective that have just released their debut album from the Trouble in Mind label, and at first listen it's like listening to one of your dad's warped records from 1968 that has been forgotten about and gathering dust. Add to this that the trio average 18 years of age, and you have some amazing (in)authenticity here. I know I often harp on about people sounding like others and how that can be detrimental - hey, I said it about one of the world's hottest bands, Cults, only yesterday - but here The Paperhead sound energised. Possibly haunted by the spirit of Syd Barrett or the halycon days when The Beatles were parallel time travellers, The Paperhead is so strong, its warm, effects-laden, dreamy psychedelia almost an affront to the band's youth and the state of today's music. The understanding between these three is also astounding.

Yet this could be the end - the three members putting The Paperhead to one side so as to attend college. Let's hope its not for long. Sure, they have already collared a sound that stands shoulder to shoulder with the genre's best, and we can all be happy with that - but as with all music addicts, we want more, damn it!

You can buy The Paperhead here.

The Paperhead - Back To Those Days
The Paperhead - Let Me Know