Comments (0) Best psych-Rock band - 2006
Psychic Ills
Describing a band with an adjective like trippy is often just a lazy critic's way of trying to impart a hard-to-describe, perception-altering sound, one that often has very little to do with actual drug use. (See: classical Indian music, Afropop, Indonesian gamelan.) To make matters more confusing, the actual genre of "psychedelic" bands stretches to include such disparate acts as Blue Cheer, Grateful Dead, Throbbing Gristle, Phish, My Bloody Valentine, Black Dice, and the Beatles. One of our favorite coloring- out-of-the-lines-of- everyday-consciousness bands is local psychonauts Psychic Ills. Appropriately named, their warbly, edge-of-sleep themes often leave you floating in a disorienting whispery-vocal fever fog. But their genius is maintaining a strong sense of groove: Shifting tempos and moods alter between lightly churning Velvet Underground swirls, silvery guitar noise, and upbeat dancey rhythms. Trip out, dude!
