Vintage Neo-Psych Dept.

I mean, you're not going to do this, because youse is a lazy-ass bum, but if you wander barefoot about th' Isle O' Foam© you'll stumble across a few neo-psych albums, nestling in the undergrowth like tropical blooms transplanted by hand from the vast arid wastelands of contemporary music. They're precious because they get psychedelia right. It's not just a matter of adding an inept guitar solo over a Velvets one-chord strum, or dialing in some effects so the word "psychedelic" will turn up in a review of your soon-to-be-forgotten waxing.

Here's a couple of relatively recent (post-Plasticland) releases that sound right to me. The Virgineers date all the way back to 1999, and their influences are clearly The Dukes Of Stratosphear (who apparently had a side project called XTC?) and English tea-time lysergica. How Far Does Space Go? collects, as far as I know, their complete recordings, and at eighty minutes is a little too rich for one sitting. It's quality stuff - avoiding pastiche (as The Dukes did) while still soaking the blotter is a neat trick. Fab!

The Sufis, drawing from the same well as The Virgineers, made three albums - this is the first, from 2012 (the Summer of So What) which delivers the contact high cosmic truth-seekers demand of their audio entertainment. The other two didn't quite snap my synapses, but this is pretty damn authentic - ten Day-Glo™splashes of mind paint, clocking in at under half an hour. Groovy!

The covers are mine. I want The Virgineers on translucent Mylar©, and lenticular 3D for The Sufis. I'll get to Plasticland soon, I hope.