The Saint James Society The Saint James Society
Tee Pee
The Saint James Society are an Austin, Texas collective, all droopy hats and opulent jewelry, raven clad and ultra rad, who are just as likely to be selling fragrances at a desert bazaar as they are pushing garage psych in a dimly lit back room full of stony, armless idols. Thankfully, we get the latter (although it won’t hurt if you want to envision the former too), and despite the fact that their self-titled debut is but a four-song EP, it oozes with enough mystic mojo to melt the moon. Like a switchblade hypnotist with an Edgar Allen Poe mind, The Saint James Society taunt you with their BEAT, a tell-tale rhythm that drives the entire EP so that the acid drone and dark fuzz of its pulsing quartet (“Reflections,” “Of Silver and Gold,” “The Ballad of the White Horse,” “The Devil, An Angel, and a Broken Window”) fills up the very marrow of your bones. It’s a moving (dare I say sexy?) trip, equal parts style and sound, and will surely find favour with fans of Black Mountain, Quest for Fire, The Black Angels, and The Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, as well as restless sinners and the terminally cool.
Check out the video for “Reflections” from The Saint James Society!
HeavyPink Flower and Song b/w There is a Light 7″
The Maple Forum
When Mos Generator split in 2009, they were working on an album that was going to be called HeavyPink. Well, Mr. Mos himself and friend of the Beard, Tony Dallas Reed, has taken that album’s concept and name off of the shelf on which it’s sat these last few years, dusted it off, and recorded an experimental solo project. The result is this two-song EP of mystic heaviness, and we find Reed (who sang, played all the instruments, and recorded it in his own HeavyHead studios) reaching back into the foggy past yet again, only where his current band Stone Axe channels the almighty rock, HeavyPink lays down a tremulous psych-doom that sleeps in graveyards and plays in opium dens. “Flower and Song,” then, is the moonlight-bathed A-side while “There is a Light” is the red light-dusted B-side, but both contain well-fused avant-garde and goth metal elements. Reed himself explains HeavyPink’s sounds as, ‘Master of Reality, Pet Sounds, and Into the Pandemonium all in one and produced by Phil Spector,’ so let THAT permeate your brain, but to me it’s a wonderfully unexpected noir punch from a certified cosmic rock master.
Listen to “Flower and Song” from Flower and Song b/w There is a Light 7″!
Build Your Beast a Fire, the second full-length from Brooklyn band Weird Owl, carries the same folksy psychedelia over from 2009′s Ever the Silver Cord Be Loosed, but atmospherically speaking, the albums sound worlds apart. The bluesy, acid-drenched rock found on that previous album has been spread out over many a wide spaces this time around and the result is an open-armed, communal vibe, like robed choirs ’round campfires, like groups of fringed-jacket smokers under diamond skies. Build Your Beast a Fire still bubbles with a mystic amalgam of Neil Young/Crazy Horse and some lo-fi groove, but develops what I can only call a more British sound, pulling in bits of Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, and the more modern, melodic pop styling of The Stone Roses, especially on the songs “Straj Proj” and “Skin the Dawn.” There’s 15 songs in total here, with a good handful being minute-and-half-long toss asides, but what’s left showcases Weird Owl’s ability to focus their third eye a little more on the turned on, tuned in, dropped out task at hand.
Listen to “Skin the Dawn” from Build Your Beast a Fire!
The Saint James Society
HeavyPink
Weird Owl