Being an anachronistic hippy of advancing years, I will cling desperately to any hope of a return to the good old days i.e. oil wheels, kaftans, teepees, free love, lava lamps, hallucinogenic love drugs, free love and tripped out psychedelic music. Oh yeah, and vigorous political debate – we can have some of that after we’re knackered out from doing all the above.
Joking aside, psychedelia is for me a curious lost genre that lies somewhere between skiffle and prog rock, an islet where the inhabitants don’t mind complexity and experiment as long as it is in short chunks as their attention span is shot. It’s still fundamentally pop, but has a twisted aspect, a darker, hypnotic personality – open the gates of perception by all means, but let’s have a sing along chorus too. And I reckon it deserves a comeback, so that’s why I’ve linked up these two chancers and stretched the analogy that flairs are coming back in way too far.
Mirror Mirror are not your usual Brooklyn band. They’re more an anti-traditional New York band, like the Velvet Underground. They talk about a circle of friends who rotate through the band offering their services and adding their creative juices to the pot, and that communal feel permeates throughout this album, though where David Riley and Ryan Lucero, song writers and founder members, stand on this whole communal thing is uncertain – it gets quite dark in there.
It starts off pleasantly though with ‘First Gate’, an introductory cluster of chimes and chants with keys that usher you in and love bomb you with opposing harmonies. There are three gates in all on this album, each one breaking up the flow of the narrative (if there is one) and providing a musical amuse bouche – this gate is very mystical leading to mystical songs, while Gate Three is more robotic, which leads to… more mystical songs. Nuts.
‘New Horizons’ is the first real song, led by an arpeggiating acoustic that takes a curious chord path to get to the song core, punctuated by jags of synth and falsetto chorale, like splashes of decadence. The understated vocals hint timidly at some kind of sex cult (“show them what you learned today in the colony” – shudder), occasionally bursting into that incongruous album title for the chorus. It’s an innocence of sorts; a dark innocence. ‘Love is the Law’ carries on this culty feel, quoting Uncle Aleister and going all Polyphonic spree, but still remaining fairly understated, uncertain – even unconfident. Synths space out, speeded up guitars ping, but it still has that sing along chorus.
If there was anything to confirm this band’s allegiance to early Pink Floyd, then it would be the next batch of songs as they could have quite easily been penned by Syd himself, only he’s dead so they weren’t. ‘Don Coyote’s Confession’, a drug prised thing uses Joe Meek guitars with that half trance voice to create proto-Pink, ‘Lock Up Your Sons’ marches with the determination of ‘See Emily Play’, only it is slower and nastier (more culty imagery) and ‘Eugene…’ well, ‘Arnold Layne’ anyone, with a Kinks riff and a mellotronic mood? Very poppy, slightly too familiar like an over amorous step uncle who is amusing but… back off.
‘Cry For More’ is that break, going forward not back in time. Angular and anachronistic (I love that word), there’s a gothier darkness here – Cure style, but tie dyed. ‘Talisman’ with all it’s wide-eyed homunculus worship lightened by a guitar arpeggio (refreshing!) does put the Pink back, only brisker and more spiritual. ‘Inward Way Out’ almost lets its hair down with a hippy swing beat, but plunges back into darkness for the closure and ‘Vision Number Nine’ goes all French in a mirror (ha) of ‘First Gate’. It’s been a long, sometimes confusing, sometimes over familiar journey, but it does make with the patchouli and light show in a fashionable loft somewhere. As I like my lamb, very Pink, very rich.
Greg Weeks, Esper and luddite, takes a more simple, electronic rustic approach to the whole third eye thing. Self confessed sixtiesophile, this his second album has that strobing paisley sound but remains a more folky, acoustic based affair with augmentation provided by mellotron, theremin, flute etc. Greg’s voice has that Gruff Rhys element that makes it quite mellow listening, but the pace is usually pretty funereal – the Nepalese gongs and fluting keys of ‘You Won’t Ever Be The Same Again,’ coupled with a despairing open chord on the acoustic is very sombre. There are moments of loungy good humour though, like ‘The Lamb’s Path’ and ‘Not Meant For Light’ – still quite dark but buoyantly trite at times, but the emphasis here is dark, dark and darker. Nine minute epic ‘The Hive’ sucks the light form your eyes, and ‘Funhouse’ makes the light hearted suggestion of “why not burn them all.” Always look on the bright side of life.
But if it is dark, is a humorous darkness. You can’t get through this review without mentioning his cover of ‘Borderline,’ so here goes. Take a fluffy piece of eighties pop, slow it down to the pace of a broken heart, throw in a Theremin and hey presto! Instant wrist-opening humour at the expense of those fat cat record producers (Greg is on Wichita, by the way).
At times, the misery does get pretty adolescent in it’s focus, but it does have that loneliness of psychosis at times. Both Mirror Mirror and Greg Weeks are pretty twisted and psychotic, but whereas MM are a shared delusion, Greg is a lone breakdown. It’s like a mirror universe version of the Pink Floyd story in fact (I am of course referring to the mirror universe where Spock has a beard and Kirk is… still Kirk to all intents and purposes). MM is Syd Barrett Floyd pre-spin out, Greg Weeks is post. Psychedelia may come back, I hope it does, but it will be a very dark summer of love this time around.
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