Despite the name and cover art, this isn’t a reissue from some long-lost 60s acid rock fossils. Having raised slightly startled smiles with debut LP The Sounds Can Be So Cruel last year, these Stockholm psych-rockers continue to surprise and delight in a way that’s incredibly detached from modernity, but not exactly stuck in the past either.
There’s a gritty pulse to their blend of spaciness and demented, colourful urgency that stops you dismissing them as hackneyed throwbacks. Sadness Of Mankind starts all twinkly with Syd Barrett stylings, before skewing into angular chords and organ. Insects gets freakier still with its free-jazz vibe and rumbling bass backdrop, synth twiddles and rugged guitar spiralling into anarchy.
Bluesy grooves are never too far away, keeping things weird but not floating totally into magic mushroom land. The infectious Hendrix-esque hook of HWY Lost (Revisited) twists and turns amid early Dr Who-rivalling whirls, and the atmospheric closing title track is oddly beautiful in an imaginative, post-rave way.
Dean Allen Foyd bid a hearty ‘balls’ to the 21st century as we know it. You’d be crazy not to get involved.
