Plenty of interesting psych stuff accumulated here over the past few weeks, while I’ve been distracted by a bunch of other things. A bit of a roundup today, kicking off with Daughters Of The Sun, whose “Ghost With Chains” is forthcoming on Not Not Fun.
The label’s significant, because NNF seem to have found a sub for the recently-demised Pocahaunted, given that “Ghost With Chains” draws from the same well of strung-out, washed-out, groan-heavy hypno-dirge. Not sure they’ll be making cute indie-pop in a couple of years like Best Coast: Daughters Of The Sun come from Minneapolis (two Minnesota bands in two days must be a record, and this is my 801st post, incidentally) and appear to have been around a while. Good band; if anyone has more info/knowledge, please share.
I’m on safer ground, I guess, with Metal Mountains and “Golden Trees”, out about now on Amish. Metal Mountains are essentially three survivors of the ‘90s band Tower Recordings, often – and justifiably – cited as key precursors of the latterday proliferation of homebaked underground bands on a, for want of a better phrase, acid-folk trip.
Maybe the best known of the three Metal Mountains players, alongside Helen Rush and the much-employed violinist Samara Lubelski, is Pat Gubler, whose records as PG Six have been very important to me these past few years. It’s Rush here, though, who seems to be taking the lead, pulling the band through some pleasingly-adjusted, brackish reveries that bear comparison, perhaps, with Espers. From “Structures In The Sun” on, there’s a great feel of tempered, candlelit freakout, maybe a fraction heavier on atmosphere than tune, but that’s not a problem.
Not much tempered about The Psychic Paramount, as you might imagine from the name. “The Psychic Paramount II”, on No Quarter (home of Endless Boogie, among other things) begins with a great eruptive roar, and initially seems kin to the blast and flail tradition of Monoshock and early Comets On Fire. Soon enough, though, a plot emerges, locating the trio (from New York, I think) as closer to Yamamotor-era Boredoms, when the chaos took on the form of ecstatic ritual circa “Super Æ”.
If anything, there might actually be a tiny bit too much form for my taste in places, where the Psychic Paramount’s hard-driving spacerock takes on a mathematical aspect, a little more like, say, Kinski or Mugstar. But this is pretty cool; wonder how it works live?