The restorative beauty of psychedelic music resides in its sonic elasticity and spiritual qualities. With life increasingly constructed by artificial deadlines, vacuous social media conversations and false political consciousness, psychedelia provides a window into a world where stuff comes in colours, where riffs bend around corners, where the sonic world comes to life in all its textural glory. It’s the counterfactual to bureaucratic repetition, the relief from domestic frustration, the answer to spiritual torpor.
And so it is with Buried Feather, and its debut eponymous album. The opening track, Plates, does everything to whisk you out of this world, and into a better place: a solid beat, some space noise, a dash of keyboards, a dirty riff, a kaleidoscopic atmosphere in which to lie down and float away. Roll over, and you’re into the lilting psychedelic wonder of Sink To The Bottom; you’re on that trip you’ll never forget, and everything makes perfect sense.
Magnetized plays with your mind – sometimes you need to peer over the edge to realise the perils of over-stimulation. Weekends trudges along looking for a cure from the day after the night before; In The Sun finds the Moon Duo groove, locks it down and exploits it for all its worth. Time It Takes grabs you by the arm and leads you into Golden Gate Park in 1968 and shows you a place where anything is possible, and spiritual enlightenment is only a coloured piece of blotter paper away. Drowning Man might be the entree to the end of awareness; it’s as much the flagging idealism of 1972 as it is the naive hopes and dreams of 1966.
And then there’s the closing track, Maybe, and another door is opened – it seems promising, and you might as well follow the quietness of its call. And so you should – Buried Feather can take you to places that only the truly enlightened band know exist.
BY PATRICK EMERY
Best Track: Plates
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: BLACK ANGELS, MOON DUO, BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE
In A Word: Psychedelic
