What Is Neo-Psych Rock?
A wistful, glorious genre of current music
How it sounds
Neo-Psych rock (Neo-psychedelia) is music that creates a disorienting fantastical world for the listener, with an emphasis on extreme beauty, the fragile, preciousness of life, the doomed eternal aching to fully embrace life.
This music can bring out intense raw feelings in the listener, keeping you from being able to hide from your desire for love. Sometimes I wonder if the composers were not cuddled enough as children and are stuck in an endless mournful desire for oceanic bliss. The music playing behind the sad lyrics can either be gloriously soaring, mystical, heavenly, or densely sexy and charismatic in contrast to the beautiful lost-soul psychology portrayed by the singers.
Lyrics are sometimes poetically dark, and there is a strong crossover with Heavy Metal and sometimes hints of Goth. Very often the music deliberately fosters a sensation of floating. The open atmospherics are often countered by the ruthless deep bass and drum rhythms that won’t let you go.
It often combines droning vocals of wistful longing that sometimes seems to come from a remote location, perhaps underwater, particularly when combined with flanging. Distanced and numbed out managing the overwhelming emotion of existence. Some singers can even sound like they’re stuck in the ache, like stoner rock, not fully releasing their angst, their expressive tonality remaining at an even keel. Other times, they can free us as they let go and scream it out and then rise into the blissful climax of the song. The vocalists are usually young men.
Often several instruments create a layered, grand sound that takes over the room like an ocean. At its lightest, there’s the fantastic lyrical Shoegazing (like Spacemen 3 and Hudson Bell) pleasantly wafting with mild drumming. Shoegazing was labelled that originally as a bit of a put-down because the musicians looked at their distortion pedals rather than interacting with the audience much.) Even Neo-psych that isn’t so Shoegazing overall tends to include some of that sound in some of their songs. They even enter that delicate space within portions of some heavier pile driving drum/bass beats like “My Bloody Valentine.”
However, the bass is more often quite heavy metal, with a sound likened to obsessive sexual desire or dark compulsions. The kaleidoscopic instrumentals balance that, so the sound is intellectually complex as well as emotionally primal.
Well-produced work benefits from Phil Specter style “wall of sound” intricate dense orchestral technique sometimes with multiple instruments playing the same thing simultaneously, intricate, reverberating. The Byrds “Eight Miles High” exemplifies wall of sound and influences Neo-Psych.
An example of Neo-Psych
The spectacular band, The Black Angels, headline at Neo-Psych festivals like Levitation. Their music is credited with fifty-one soundtracks including the Twilight movie Eclipse, Assassin’s Creed, Whip It, and many others including the only movie with their music that I’ve seen, which is the excellent Kill the Messenger about the journalist Gary Webb, who blew the cover on the Iran Contra scandal. Their wonderful “Black Grease” was also the soundtrack for the TV show, True Detective Season 1. Members include vocalist Alex Maas who also plays bass, drone machine and organ, the inspiring drummer/percussionist Stephanie Bailey, Christian Bland on guitar, drone machine and organ, Kyle Hunt on keyboards, percussion, bass, guitar, drone machine and organ, and guitarist Jake Garcia.
Comparisons
Neo-Psych is not simple like folk, going by a somewhat predictable formula like Blues or rough and angry like punk but makes use of distortion, orchestral instruments, jazzy improv, synthesizers. It’s similar to Prog rock’s sci-fi New Ageish grandeur without necessarily having the major label producer’s bounty associated with the Prog period like King Crimson, Yes, Genesis, Jethro Tull. Prog rock is about pushing musical limits, exploring new territory beyond traditional structures. Ironically in spite of the ancient Fantasy feel, like Punk, Prog rock lyrics often eschewed love for sexual references, whereas Neo-Psych includes both.
People might assume there is some relation to New Age ambient music, because of the expansive mysticism but it really is quite different, with more character, risks, uniqueness, broken emotions rather than safe affirmations. It can be intensely, blissfully, sensually meditative and Kundaliniesque like Tantra Yoga without being Eastern or promoting any specific spiritual teachings.
History
Neo-Psych began in the ’70s in England with a bouncier pop vibe than we have in the U.S. which pushed into avant-garde territory, experimental illuminated and ambitious, over a driving bass line. It continued the Psychedelic Rock of the ’60s but with more advanced technology. The Brits expanded into Shoegazing or Dream Pop in the ’90s. They tend to label a wide range of music Acid Punk. Echo & the Bunnymen spearheaded Neo-Psych from Liverpool.
It spilled over into America with Siouxsie and the Banshees. The 80’s in Los Angeles the Paisley Underground movement solidified the trend. Space pop like the gorgeous Galaxie 500 represents that style well, while The Black Angels demonstrate the harder edge. The Dandy Warhols and fabulous The Brian Jonestown Massacre may be familiar to you because of the documentary Dig! Currently, the location most associated with Neo-Psych is Austin.
Some influences
13th Floor Elevators, which is particularly evident with The Black Angels, King Crimson, Donovan, The Beatles, The Amboy Dukes, Country Joe and the Fish, Pink Floyd, Moby Grape, Strawberry Alarm Clock, The Grateful Dead, Cream, Jefferson Airplane, Traffic, Vanilla Fudge, Jimmy Hendrix, Prince, the Pretty Things, The Monkees (Head), The Electric Prunes, Quicksilver Messenger Service.
Themes
Trancing using drugs or natural methods to disorder the senses and access the subconscious and perhaps create mystical experiences and insights into the nature of reality. While drugs may inspire some of the musicians and fans, the “psychedelic” label need not be taken literally.
The lyrics often are nonsensical, with non-sequiturs and hypnagogic surreal images that go nowhere, which has not set well with critics. The meaning lives between the words. Sometimes, the merging of lovers is described, the cosmic oneness of all things but it has moved onto irony rather than the naivete of the original Psychedelic rock.
Festivals
Levitation (previously called Austin Neo-Psych Fest,) Gizzfest, Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia, Northwest Psychfest, Milwaukie Psychfest.
Some Neo-Psych Bands
The Black Angels, Animal Collective, Oasis, Spacemen 3, The Flaming Lips, Mazzy Star, Hudson Bell, Gravenhurst, The Verve, King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard, Speck Mountain, Dead Meadow, Dinosaur Jr., Black Rebel Motorcycle Gang, Allah-Las, Superchunk, Olivia Tremor Control, Ty Segall, White Fence, Wand, Mikal Cronin, Link Wray, Wooden Shjips, Dead Skeletons, Witch, The Warlocks, The Murlocs, Eldren, Fuzz, Moon Duo, Froth, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Meatbodies, Bad Ego Trip, Tame Impala, Mercury Rev, Primal Scream.
Neo-Psych in literature
My own latest novel, Floating on Secrets, combines New Adult, Psychological Suspense and Romantic Suspense genres for a story in which the main characters are Neo-Psych Rock musicians in Indiana. The town is in trouble and music just might save it. The lead characters cultivate visions to bring back to the community from their Hero’s journey, but they don’t use drugs for that; instead, they pursue hallucinations by the use of float tanks enhanced with tranced-out playlists. The protagonist, Flair, studies the Collective Unconscious in the Carl Jung Club, and the novel suggests that there’s some possibility that that theoretical psychological phenomenon may be at work here. I created a playlist of the songs and bands mentioned in the novel at Pinterest.
