Dragontears
Turn On Tune In Fuck Off!!
Bad Afro

If this, Dragontears’ third album, is indeed their final one (as it has been reported to be), they’re going out in a phosphorescent blaze of acid rock glory. Part Danish drug-speak, part freak machine electricity, Dragontears has allowed Lorenzo Woodrose — with help from his friends from On Trial — to open his third eye real wide and stretch the psychedelic sounds of Baby Woodrose into a strange, dreamy trip through a field of toadstools. Like its predecessors, Turn On Tune In Fuck Off!! is just six songs long and kicks things off in fuzzy fashion with “Two Tongue Talk,” and “No Salvation,” then follows with the mega-mellow “My Friend,” the most Baby-sounding song on deck. The second half of the album is decidedly more far-out than the first half, with “Time of No Time” leading us deep into the cosmos and dropping us into the void that is “William,” the album’s obligatory opus, a big spoonful of thick cough syrup that drones on in a red haze for over 13 minutes before melting into “Mennesketvilling,” which wraps us in the same foreign-tongued intonations. A good album to end the short-lived Dragontears era, but you know, as long as Baby Woodrose is still around, we’re not really going to miss them all that much. They sure were a fun-fried diversion, though.

Listen to “My Friend” from Turn On Tune In Fuck Off!!

U.S. Christmas
Run Thick in the Night
Neurot

Their name might invoke cheerier holiday associations, but the heavy, cosmic, psych-drone of U.S. Christmas (or USX for brevity) really has more in common with the eeriness of today’s particular celebration. I’m not saying that the North Carolina band’s fifth release, Run Thick in the Night, is some kind of spook-tacular monster mash, it’s just that it will stalk you like a dense fog rolling in off the docks and hunt you like a shadowy figure beneath a pale moon. There’s a wide range of tricks being offered here, including monumental opuses (“In the Night”), brazen circuit breakers (“Wolf on Anareta”), wistful ballads (“Fire is Sleeping,” “Devil’s Flower in Mother Winter,” and “Mirror Glass”), and a whole bunch of dreamy, string-infused dope rock that often gets labeled as post-rock, although to me it delivers a solid Earth vibe with vocals. The 13 songs on Run Thick in the Night thrive on a deep, dark, and hallowed psychedelic songwriting tradition of bloodshot eyes and loose dirt, conjuring up derelict spirits, otherworldly and otherwise.

Listen to “The Quena” from Run Thick in the Night!

Hypnos 69
Legacy
Elektrohasch

Hypnos 69 say that their latest album, Legacy, is their magnum opus. Given that it’s been four years since their last release, The Eclectic Measure, and given that Legacy‘s seven songs clock in at around 73 minutes, I’d be taking their claims of grandeur very seriously. These Belgian lotus eaters have been severely underrated when it comes to flying the freak flag of psychedelic rock n’ roll, and it seems like they’ve decided that Legacy is going to be the huge flashing neon sign they’re erecting on the skyline of your mind. The longest trips on deck, opener “Requiem (For a Dying Creed)” and closer “The Great Work,” are swirling bookends of carpet-riding narco-bliss, full of fuzzy jams, wild, druggy solos (that’s guitar, flute, and horn), and dreamy passages. And really, you get the same kind of thing with the songs in between but in shorter doses, and it all hangs together with the loose architecture of a house of cards floating in the clouds. It’s like they’ve taken some Lorenzo Woodrose-inspired acid rock and twisted it into a never-ending strand of progressive licorice for one mind-bending treat. Awesomely far out, this one. Legacy might turn out to be just that.

Listen to “The Sad Destiny We Lament” from Legacy!