At last, the debut long-player from premier Cambridge consciousness-expanding rockers Psychic Lemon arrives on the scene.
‘Ticktoc’, a song they have been honing live for a while is a strong opener, a solid bass riff and punching drumming then some vocals airily drift in, countered by walls of sound from their double guitars. I last saw them in December at the Mill Road Winter Fair, with a flute player really adding an extra layer….and here he is on this track too! An unexpected bonus as the flute fizzes through an energetic coda.
From a pastoral acoustic guitar and choral introduction, ‘Death Cult Blues’ bursts into life, with more starry flute. The sound on this track and most of the album is intricate and multi-layered, it must have been compelling to stand outside in the garden listening at the home-built Psychic Studio “5 minutes down the road from Syd Barrett’s old place”….. and I think his spirit lives on in the instrumental ‘Analogue Summer’, from the birdsong bookends to tremendous slide guitar this is a beautiful season indeed.
‘Good Cop/Bad Cop’ is another live favourite from their current set as is ‘Dilator’, a rocker with an epic feel and strange paranoid punkish lyric. The final track ‘Horizon’ is more than ten minutes of many of the elements from the rest of the album, woven into a widescreen psychedelic spectacular.
This album has captured the experimental dynamic of the band very successfully; it draws on their influences from a much loved style of music and then adds some powerful edges with the as-live feel of the recording.
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