Thirteen years later this band from Texas continues to evolve their sound. Now six albums into their career, they have not lost their taste for weirdness as their singer is quick to declare that it is “time to say goodbye to normal people “.
If you compare this album to their 2010 debut Larger Than Human the first thing you notice is how the volume knob is dialed back. The psychedelic haze begins to cloud your mind right from the opening track. On songs like ‘Capsize’ they step on the gas with an energetic lust for rocking that would not be out of place on an AC/DC album. The guitars sit back in the mix here to give Dani Neff’s voice the space to breathe it needs; after all her quirky light-hearted vocal delivery is the lifeblood of their musical identity.
Despite the sometimes sugary pop cool that Neff’s voice flirts with, harder-rocking pulse bubbles under the surface of these songs. They have matured from Camaro-riding desert rock, to a more jangling tension that sits somewhere between garage power-pop and indie rock, with the emphasis typically placed on the rock part of the equation.
That is until the drugs really kick in. At first, it was just a microdose. You might have thought this stuff is not working. I should take more. Then the next thing you know the world around you has slowed down to the point of travelling back in time to the sixties when the hippy sensibilities had infiltrated the suburbs. The next thing you know you are at a bizarre garden party as the band has wandered off into lounge tinged bossa nova with ‘Sometime Island’. The kind of song that deserves polyester leisure suits and quaaludes chased with Long Island Ice Teas .
As the California sun bathes you, the band allows you to drift off into a lazy river of your mind by going into a dreamy jazz-like shuffle on ‘Yellow’. Neff’s vocals float with an even more subdued ambiance here. The listless song wanders around rather than grooving with rock undertones. As they have taken you further from your expectations of rock music, perhaps you have gotten lost in your thoughts and have begun to not only ponder your own existence, but if the term rock music refers to the fact that its beat is more grounding if you were. You might be onto something, as the more frantic tension that drives ‘Dozer’ does ground the album with the palm-muted guitar. There is a slight post-punk influence here if we are talking bands like Gang of Four or Television.
Your feet are allowed just enough time on solid ground before being carried back up into the cosmos with the trippy ‘Lookout Mountain’. The heavier riffs that emerge recall the acid rock of the sixties, giving Neff more room to flex her vocal chords, belting out a bit. The pace does not pick up until the four minute mark and puts things back into a territory closer to stoner rock. The album reaches a prog rock climax with the more sublimely serpentine ‘Rage of the Queen’. The myriad of sonic colors that create this musical mandala, makes this album their most unique. This one grows on you with each listen and fans of the band should find this a logical progression into greener fields of exploration
Buy the album here:
https://megafaunamusic.bandcamp.com/album/olympico
8 / 10
WIL CIFER