The Psych Rock Lounge

So true, so true.

Also, yes, we really should talk about Ogden's Nut Gone Flake. That opening cut is killer, man.

Now this is a strange one.

Past one of the grooviest openers ever with the title track, we have a first side that mixes some out there heavy rock, psychified knees-up, and a soul influenced track... and then a second side that dives into a surreal fairy tale told in gobbledygook that features slang of the time.

In some parts, it feels like the only tougher listens are Zappa and Beefheart records.

This is also very much fantastic, and there's nothing else like it. It comes highly recommended, especially for the title track and that second side.

 

Always liked that one ...had it when it came out but didn't get one of the round box albums that came out in a limited supply.

 

 

 

 

 

Aren't you a lucky, obedient hubby!  Yeah, but you have prog, does she? 

 

Parker started off by releasing a self titled EP in 2008 before releasing a full length album in 2010 titled Innerspeaker. Both the EP and album featured spacy atmospheric Shoegaze styled guitar rock, and were both well received in Parker's native Australia. Boyed by his success, Parker branched out on his follow up album, 2014's Lonerism, to include real synths in Tame Impala's songs along with his already well used sonic tricks adding of phasing, echo, delay and flanging effects to both his music and vocals. Innerspeaker was actually recorded without synthesizers, with Parker using only pitch shifting of his guitar phrases in order to simulate synth sounds and studio signal flanging.

 

Another great plus to Parker's sonic arsenal is his vocal resemblance to the late John Lennon, which is no doubt tailor made for Psych Rock music.

 

Highlights to Lonerism include an unintentional mini suite of songs that include Music to Walk Home By, Why Don't They Talk To Me and the incredibly melodic and catchy Feels Like We Only Go Backwards.

 

This is simply excellent Neo-psych. Even for an old dog like me.

 

If there is a more famous or well known 'underground' music lounge than was in existence for as short a time as London's trendy UFO club in the late sixties, I haven't heard of it. The fact that it was one the major starting points for the nascent psychedelic band named The Pink Floyd must certainly have instilled the defunct venue with legend as did another resident house band of the time named Soft Machine. As jazz was seriously thought to the next musical wave of the fast approaching 'existential' sixties, many jazz musicians and rockers started to team up  for a craze that never developed. The Beatles actually took over the musical zeitgeist of the early sixties in the U.K., quite to everyone's surprise. Including the an executive for England's Decca Records, who turned down The Beatles after an audition for the label, and babbled something about guitar rock bands being on the way out, as he showed The Beatles' manager the door.

 

Enter Soft Machine who successfully, and perhaps for the only time, combined psychedelia with their own brand of early jazz rock fusion. Recording an album after Pink Floyd's debut Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the SM had big shoes to fill, but with drummer Robert Wyatt admirably handling vocals after the departure of Kevin Ayers, Soft Machine's debut was an unqualified artistic, if not a wholly commercial success. Hidden in the layers of their Psych/Jazz rock was the Canterbury roots from which they evolved from.

 

As the third great psychedelic rock album to be released in the U.k. in the late sixties that was not created by either The Beatles or Pink Floyd, that was quite an accomplishment.