by Andrew Kaster

If you find yourself tiring of familiar sounds while sitting atop the peak of modern critically acclaimed psychedelia, consider Young Prisms’ debut Friends for Now, an exhilarating breath of suspended free-fall into phosphorescent abyss. Eschewing the languorous nature of most shoegazer bands, Young Prisms enter realms of impertinent and concentrated rocking; antonymous to the preconceived notions of the genre. While somewhat as derivative as their contemporaries, there’s something about the peppy approach of this Californian quintet that makes their album more genuine than critics may be willing to admit. Taking a sonic shotgun to the ears, songs such as “I Don’t Get Much” and “Breathless” mark a terse statement on the band’s part as they ride on waves of raucous guitar and steady krautrock rhythms. Adding to their reputation as shoegazer revisionists are the momentous shifts in tempo and dynamics that appear in the tense and focused tracks “Sugar” and “Feel Fine”. The trip reaches its peak on the hallucinogenic and swaggering denouement “Stay Awake”, ending the assault on your cerebral cortex, leaving you half-deafened in its wake.

The only minor complaint I have about this album is the consistent effort they put into paying tribute to the genre, while keeping innovations somewhat restrained. Like all of their contemporaries, keyboards shimmer, drums echo, and voices whir only to evaporate, making for a distinctly familiar setting. The band’s main distinction (besides their uncharacteristically energetic nature) is the clear dichotomous composition of guitars. Though the oscillating tones meld into palpable and full-bodied atmospheres, you’ll often hear the guitars combat one another. As one enters bright and laconic lead parts, the other is taking broad strokes to paint a thick and vibrating buzz. Though somewhat jarring and heavy, there is a “lightness” to the music that keeps everything uniformly poppy, akin to Jonathan Donahue’s early work with Mercury Rev and The Flaming Lips.

Shoegazer is often dubbed as “the scene that celebrates itself”, and it’s easy to see why; flouting the doctrine that these bands adhered to is a difficult thing to do. While Young Prisms hold onto tradition, they have taken a detour into a sunnier and more urgent world that makes Friends for Now such an engaging listening experience. Through their subtle surf-rock influences, bleeding heart chord changes, and ability to get locked into hypnotic dancey grooves, it is easy to excuse them for sprinkling “oohs” and “ahhs” and various other familiar sounds throughout the album. While most of their psychedelic-pop contemporaries are often staid, Young Prisms pull up their bootstraps and deliver shatteringly loud, droning neo-psychedelia that will leave you paralyzed.

RIYL: Mercury Rev, The Flaming Lips, No Joy, Eternal Summers, Woodsman, Golden Ages, Sun Airway

Young Prisms – Sugar

Young Prisms – I Don’t Get Much

Young Prisms – If You Want To

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With more emphasis on guitars and real drums, Woodsman continue the trend of electronic-induced psychedelia prevalent in major acts today. From Animal Collective’s tribal-like fervency to the lush “chillwave” tag associated with acts like Washed Out and Neon Indian, the most recent crop of the stylistic movement has been surprisingly accessible considering its psychedelic roots. Artists within it now sit alongside contemporary college-radio favorites like The Shins and Beach House with ease as listeners oblivious to the “chillwave” tag either find trendy nostalgic value in it or dismiss it as lo-fi rubbish, often without a clue as to what lo-fi actually is. One could argue to mesh lo-fi and electronic genres for recent artists like Washed Out, who defy lo-fi conventions by replacing tinny strats and minimal percussion with sonorous synths and booming drum loops. But even when the automated percussion is minimized, the flexibility of synth VSTs and samplers dilutes the essence of lo-fi, which is to produce quality songwriting with the bare minimum of resources. The polarizing effect on listeners of early Pavement, Modest Mouse, and later on Ariel Pink had much to do with the defiance of rock/pop expectations; radio listeners were so accustomed to artists cloaking their weaknesses through superfluously glistening production – especially by the late ‘80s and early ’90s – that many perennial lo-fi rock acts were initially questioned, regardless of how highly their songwriting is valued now.

Today, many people perceive lo-fi as anything that sounds gauzy or muddled. The thing is though, shitty production does not equate to lo-fi. The genre should be provided more as a complement than a tag for anyone with cheap recording methods and subpar songs. Woodsman seem well aware of the fact that songwriting helps define lo-fi and NOT vice versa. The Brooklyn/Colorado quartet’s full-length debut Rare Forms capitalizes on both conventions of lo-fi rock and expansive psychedelic efforts without cloaking or manipulating anything. The result is an album that does not confine itself to one approach, but rather a bevy of them completely reliant on the song’s tone and mood. There are plenty of lush, atmospheric psychedelic efforts on the album, but there are also those with heavy noise and drone influences that are potentially ear-piercing. Although repetition does get in the way of quality occasionally, Rare Forms turns out to be a fascinating listen that all artists bent out of shape on this lo-fi tag should listen to. For Woodsman, they set a nice example for weak artists attempting to write music for the lo-fi ideology, out of novelty instead of necessity.

“Dead Awake” explores the experimental path more, alternating between hazy acid-jazz and climactic percussion. When the latter fades momentarily, it resembles a room filled with the voices of distressed spirits; the chilling effect is even more gratifying once the percussion commences again and puts forth a tactfully ambitious turn, where the conventional beat turns into improv-like pit-pats. “Spectral Creatures” also sports some interesting percussion. It sounds like a mad fusion of hi-hats initially, with a constant buzzing drone in the background providing one of few melodic moments. It was obviously written as a lead-in to “I Can’t Move”, a refreshingly suave approach where glimpses of Afro-pop keys and delicate guitar strums combine for a lushly atmospheric effort. Animal Collective comparisons are abundant here, both in the Avey Tare-like vocal delivery and progression of wavy sounds. The chiming bells in the last minute represent the most delightful moment though, with smooth guitar licks gently caressing the bouncy keys with appropriate fervor.

“Future Pulls” takes the most advantage of Woodsman’s natural knack for subtleties. A twangy guitar tremolo is on double loop over vocal sound effects and clicky percussion, both of which evolve minimally to help enhance the sitar-like trance effect of the guitar tremolo. Both this and the following track, “Unnamed”, are successes for the most part, but some more variation would have helped. “Unnamed” takes a route that should be familiar to fans of The Flaming Lips’ newest album, Embryonic. Think of a more subdued, less abrasive version of “Aquarius Sabotage”. “Unnamed” is part psychedelia, noise, and post-punk as well. This percussion-heavy track works around a constant backing drone and warbled yelp of sorts. The experiment here is relatively successful, but it would be nice to see the band flesh out songs like this a tad more. There should be more body and less drone; the impressive use of percussion fortunately keeps the track upright.

After a slew of shorter releases that contained a bunch of hits and misses, Rare Forms is not the huge jump forward some fans were hoping for. Still, it is Woodsman’s most consistent and impressive release to date barring a few mundane efforts. The emphasis on repetition can become grating with a handful of thin concepts, though some tracks succeed greatly. In “Beat the Heat” there is a moment where a fluttering harmonica arpeggio enhances the overall mood of the track without sacrificing the initial presentation. In the process, it contributes an infectious quality that paces cohesively with the tones of psychedelia already present. I hope that Woodsman plant similar devices to this one on their next release, which judging from their prolific nature should not be too far off in the future.

RIYL: The Flaming Lips, Sonic Youth, Young Prisms, Kraftwerk, Mercury Rev, KeepAway, Small Black, Pill Wonder, Animal Collective, Neon Indian, Memory Tapes, Modest Mouse

Woodsman – I Can’t Move

Woodsman – Beat the Heat

Woodsman – Insects

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I have heard several people complain about this phenomenon of “lo-fi” artists. Why hide songwriting under layers of incoherence, they usually ask, if the songwriting is allegedly good? Being one of the more popular lo-fi examples, Ariel Pink is one of the first examples they use. I then usually ask if them if they have ever heard The Doldrums, his debut full-length. I tell them to name a song on there that would sound “better” if reverted to the studio quality of – say – his most recent album, Before Today. The thing is, Ariel Pink’s style of songwriting at that period – arguably his bleakest and most creative – went hand-in-hand with such an approach, one that gushed with the melancholy and late-night feel of the album with greater authenticity than most artists around. Sure, a more fleshed-out version of any of these songs would still showcase his strengths as a songwriter for any skeptic, but beyond that there is a certain atmosphere embedded in songs written for a more lo-fi method that accommodates the sound beautifully.

Some see it as extraneous novelty when an artist beatboxes his percussion tracks, or when hissing sounds from their mouth serve as prevalent effects. I am not one to buy into novelty effects to disguise poor songwriting either, but if one creates a successful song that would actually benefit from such bizarrely appropriate methods then I do not see the issue. To imagine the muddy desperation of Ariel Pink’s “For Kate I Wait” under the control of an expert percussionist would just not have the same allure to me as the original songwriter finding any method possible to emit his percussion of choice, especially when that original creator did not have the means presently available to him to do otherwise. Call it part of the story and nothing else if you must, but if that overall result produces something that is clearly coherent enough to identify the artist’s intent then complaints are somewhat futile.

Even to the critics of such labels, the recording style of Australian-based Blank Realm is lo-fi in a rewarding sense. Their methods do not stray too far from what you would expect from financially strapped start-ups. Well, their heavy use of the four-track is somewhat rare in an era dominated by high-tech studio programs, but Blank Realm are no stranger to Pro Tools as well; they will use it if the track calls for it. This is somewhat irrelevant overall though; the recording device at hand is hard to spot because of their muddy sound, which is heavily distorted and sometimes vague but never in excess or over-indulgence. In “Trained Creep”, for instance, there are many different progressions occurring simultaneously, with not one of them demanding more clarity than what is already present. Everything is highly coherent, especially in this awesomely unsettling epic. The varying and indistinguishable methods of recording throughout their second album, Deja What?, enforce my earlier point that distinguishable intent is most essential.

“Trained Creep” is an instrumental effort that shows off the band’s strengths extraordinarily. A distorted effect from the guitar is constant, but there are stabs of icy synths that align with the pit-pattering percussion. The emergence of hazy hi-hats about a minute in is abruptly signaled by the increased presence of the synth, which is presented as a rapid tremolo as the multiple guitar progressions create a swirling effect reminiscent of both post-punk and psychedelia – The Flaming Lips are not too far off, especially their recent Embryonic material. The whole track sounds like one big anxious build-up, which is very exhilarating considering the swelling progressions combine for some wonderful noise that anyone – from psych-rock acts or noise-punk experimentalists – would be proud of.

“Full Moon Door” sounds like it features some of that mouth-beatboxing generally associated with artists like Ariel Pink, who incorporated it with the somber wistfulness of The Doldrums for a very memorable effect. Blank Realm incorporate it with more energy and optimism; the percussion use seems like a fusion of beatboxing and a reverbed hi-hat, but I can’t be certain. Either way, you have to like what they are doing here. A droning organ nearly hides itself in the background over the percussion and its lively progressions subtly serve as the backbone of the track. It is one of several highlights on Deja What?, which is a very impressive sophomore accomplishment for Blank Realm.

RIYL: The Flaming Lips, Sonic Youth, !!!, Beach House, Mercury Rev, The Delgados, Six by Seven, Galaxie 500, Luna, Mojave 3, Yo La Tengo, Sebadoh

Blank Realm – Full Moon Door

Blank Realm – Trained Creep

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