Psychedelic
Noah’s Barks pages relating to the psychedelic genre. Combine with other tags for subgenres, e.g. “psychedelic+pop” or “psychedelic+rock.”
-
The Zombies – “Odessey and Oracle”
‘Odessey and Oracle’ is one of the greatest psychedelic pop albums—heck, one of the greatest albums ever made. (read more)
-
Bardo Pond – “Lapsed”
Lapsed is so close to being really great. The drone influence is really pronounced, and with their female vocalist they actually sound a bit like Boris at parts. This is straight-up noisegaze, but under the noise there are some subtle pleasant melodies, they’re just primitive and more buried than your usual shoegaze, but still dynamic enough to… (read more)
-
Blur – “Leisure”
“She’s So High” and “Wear Me Down” are pretty good songs, but the rest of Leisure is mostly just serviceable Baggy-Madchester rock. The band tries to cover up a lack of hooks and good melodies with a lot of minor noisy psychedelic guitar wash. Sometimes it works and makes for a pleasant shoegaze-ish song, such… (read more)
-
Comus – “East of Sweden: Live at the Melloboat Festival 2008”
Er, how to critique this? The performances just sound so… impassioned. The opposite of what Comus should be. They are almost the exact same as their studio counterparts, just in worse quality. “Diana” is just too abrasive here and not very listenable. There’s a little bit of improvising in the middle of the songs but… (read more)
-
Comus – “First Utterance”
An all-time favorite album, ‘First Utterance’ is shocking, anachronistic folk rock that caused a career shift and death of its band, Comus. (read more)
-
The Olivia Tremor Control – “Music From the Unrealized Film Script, Dusk at Cubist Castle” (1996)
You know all those retro indie bands around today that make music styled in the vein of ’60s psychedelic pop, only mildly updating it with more modern (but still tepid) production tricks? Well, that stuff has actually been going on as far back as the ’90s. Dusk at Cubist Castle is an extremely derivative album,… (read more)
-
Captain Beyond – “Captain Beyond”
Some incredible songs on ‘Captain Beyond,’ interesting lyrics, and ferocious performances. I greatly dislike the psychedelic mixing, however. (read more)
-
The Byrds – “The Notorious Byrd Brothers”
On ‘The Notorious Byrd Brothers,’ The Byrds oversaturate their album with too much hippy-dippy, reverbing, psychedelic production and undermine the immediacy of their signature jangly pop rock. (read more)
-
The Soft Machine – “The Soft Machine” (1968)
The Soft Machine are a rightfully-named band. Their compositionally-layered blend of jazzy, psychedelic rock with frantic organ playing sounds like a machine straight out of a cartoon huffing and puffing, tooting and whistling while it bounces around, blowing smoke everywhere. Seriously though—that organ. Mike Ratledge is incredible here, and gives even Ray Manzarek a run… (read more)
-
Broadcast – “The Book Lovers EP”
Pretty wonderful, even if the songs on ‘The Book Lovers EP’ are fairly interchangeable. Broadcast would develop more of their own style over time. (read more)