Crystal Antlers - Tentacles

PSYCH ROCK

This debut long-player from Californian psych-rock hairballs Crystal Antlers is ablaze with acid-fried garage, solar free-jazz, lo-fi blare and scorchio freak-pop. Yet its escapist clamour is offset by an apocalyptic lyrical backdrop.

Bawdily conjoining the raucous appendages of Comets on Fire, No Age, Love and MC5, Tentacles gruffly embraces lupine love-ins (‘Dust’), woozy prog (‘Glacier’), cataclysmic organ ruckus (‘Memorized’), and garrulous alt.rock disorder (‘Until the Sun Dies Part 1’).’Andrew’, meanwhile, manifests the rabble’s shaggy take on astral soul, to searing effect.

So we salute you, Crystal Antlers: may your beards remain long and your doomsdays gregarious.

(Touch & Go)