To lighten up the otherwise solemn trade of regularly assaying strangers’ musicality, here’s an attempted joke: what does a cowboy eating a psychoactive cactus sound like? Chomp chomp then Psychic Ills’ fifth album ‘Inner Journey Out’.
It wasn’t always like this. The New York duo’s formative years were mired, lost, in amorphous aural experimentation. Maybe they were all too aware of this themselves; their first album was called ‘Dins‘. Noise perhaps only ripe for rediscovery as a mind-altering experience whenever society’s next counterculture kink wrinkles by and nothing else but a confused state of mind makes sense. A while off then.
A coinage of more coherent psychedelic-rock numbers ever since 2011’s ‘Hazed Dream‘ has profited Tress Warren and Elizabeth Hart though, and the previously hinted at frills of psychedelic-country now ride erect in the saddle for their longest output to date.
Warren idly wafts the words “I’m going through another change” on ‘Another Change‘, a song dense in guitar slides and trembles. Evidently the change is only skin-deep. Like their previous expeditions, a lax life is still the meaning of life and recumbency remains the prime position. Which also means there’s little time or energy on tap to feel around for any unused inspiration.
Familiar bluesy patterns emerge on the clip-clopping ‘Back To You‘, the pedal-steeling ‘No Worry‘ and ‘I Don’t Mind‘ – the latter featuring a seductive cameo from Mazzy Star‘s Hope Sandoval. The sugar rush has long since evaporated on ‘Coca Cola Blues‘, replaced by studied strumming and elongated harmonica sobs. A lyric on this track is especially epithetic as the record’s raison: “I don’t wanna spend no more time thinking anymore.”
Psychic Ills’ instinct at connecting with listeners by almost entirely disconnecting is tautest on the three instrumentals that yawn out at varying lengths. ‘Hazel Green‘ is harmony itself lying on a table being massaged by the oiled hands of peace. And even if there is a temporal imbalance in ‘Ra Wah Wah‘s will-it-ever-end guitar hook hogging nine minutes compared to ‘New Mantra‘s contently-hippy two, who can be bothered caviling when your headspace is at least a universe away?
For all the album’s flickering hypnagogic hues – ‘Confusion (I’m Alright)‘s keyboards lulling you towards the coolest of sleep for example – your body and mind sometimes need a stretch before they seize up, but ‘Inner Journey Out’ lives on the shortest line possible between two points, a hollow effort to function all that is required, and that wait for movement goes on.
In the end the 14 songs don’t take you any place new — everyone from The Rolling Stones to Spiritualized, Bob Dylan to Brian Jonestown Massacre has been going there for eons — or anywhere at all.
Still, chomp, that’s the whole point.
