Live4ever Presents: The Wands


wandswide




To describe the new material from Danish psych-rock duo The Wands as ‘typical’ of them is misleading.

It would suggest they are somewhat one dimensional, or that they opt not to push their musical boundaries. But this is the antithesis of The Wand’s musical ethic; a plethora of influences collaborate within the group’s expansive taste in experimental soundscapes to create a track which continues to cement their place in the evolution of psychedelic popular music.

Spotted by Fuzz Club Records in August 2012, they released their debut EP ‘Hello I Know The Blow You Grow Is Magic’ the following November, and are now said to be ‘working hard’ on a first full length album, on which ‘The Dawn‘ is set to appear.

‘The Dawn’, and its video, were released online in early April, in tandem with announcements of two soon-to-follow shows in London. The track ensures their gigs are, for a variety of reasons, well worth attending – and not just for the most devout psych-rock followers. Worth attending because they appear to have interpreted and recycled some of the many different trippy tones that make The BeatlesLove‘ album a production masterclass, and because they managed to do that in just over four minutes.

And how about for the fact that these two (childhood friends Christian Skibdal and Mads Gräsare) are flying the flag for psych rock almost single handedly – at least when one draws a panoramic view around the spectrum of contemporary popular music. Furthermore, despite not driving the VW Campervan of psyche at 100 rocking miles per hour, ‘The Dawn’ still feels very much like a teleological ascend due to the soft cutting high end sitar-like guitar riffs, casual and fragmented drums, and the subtle yet somehow fore-fronted vocals: ‘Exercising chemistry makes a new reality/You’re sleepy but the night has gone/Let’s go get it on’; a paisley stamped invitation to turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream.

Scour YouTube for live performances of the group, and the bending rhythms, dotted fret runs, even the hard-blues riffs that sit rigidly underneath some of their tracks are perfectly captured and exploded live – something their most famous contemporaries in the sphere of the horribly coined ‘guitar music’ genre occasionally struggle to achieve. Tame Impala’s (a group who The Wands would surely be the perfect opener for) ‘Elephant’ for example, is surprisingly nowhere near as forceful live as it is on record.

The group’s native tongue isn’t English, despite how convincingly their vocals glide and weave loosely in the parameters of psychedelia, and despite considering the visual counterpart; an almost kaleidoscopic, hypnotic journey through what could be the London Underground, starting above ground then jumping below. Wistfully infused with distorted images of the duo intermittently appear, demonstrating them as the nucleus of their musical (and visual) prowess, and the chief drivers of any journey you take with them. These components infer the group’s intention to make their audience trip as hard as possible, both aurally and visually.

While others have already used all manner of contradictory, illogical and condescending sentiments in order to define The Wands as a drug-trip band, they insinuate these themes much more simply through their music. They are simply just one of those bands who write songs in that way; the way that makes you want to be influenced by narcotics to experience the full illusion – much like mid-60s Beatles, The Byrds, The Doors and even moments of avant garde from the mid 20th century such as, in the unexpected cuts and array of instruments, Stockhausen.



If this track is anything to go by then who knows, the scruff of psychedelia’s neck may just be pulled further into the fast lane of popular music – and it will be in a VW Campervan.

(Jonny Shelton)


Learn More