Naming your band after my favourite Ultimate Spinach tune is a pretty good way to ensure that I'm going to pay at least passing attention to your material, and when it's as strong as this E.P from Sacramento based one-man-band Chris Billington you can bet I'm going to stick around to hear more.
With an eye catchingly colourful sleeve that sums up its psych pop contents perfectly, this is an E.P that on first listen appears to be a bit of a one trick pony, but blossoms unexpectedly with repeated listens.
Layered in reverb, this is vintage sounding psych pop straight from the garage - more like a garage band's take on "Crimson & Clover" than the more ornate baroque pop stylings that seem to be in vogue with current psych pop revivalists, and is all the better for it.
Opener "Little Prayer" is a cool piece of Tarantino beat with oddles of atmosphere and some lovely tremelo guitar work with a nice, creamy guitar tone that's still reverberating around my skull. "Daydream Sunbeam" quickly dispels the arguments of any who would point the 'retro' finger by coupling what is at heart a simple garage pop ballad with layers of tormented guitar squall at a level which would probably have J.Mascis thinking "This is a bit much". Best of all though is "Death on Television", which evokes the Beatles via Lawrence Arabia with the sort of irresistible falsetto vocals that have helped the soulful psychedelia of Unknown Mortal Orchestra find a wide audience.
Available here as a name your price download:
No comments:
Post a Comment