The Freeks

Crazy World

The feel-bad hit of ’74 that never was. Imagine it’s the early 1970s, and the only technology we have is weird comic-book shit that throbs and spins around but doesn’t actually do anything specific. Now paint the sky green and the grass orange and give everybody LSD-laced cookies for currency. Now picture the biggest rock’n’roll band in that world. Does it look and sound like Blackie Lawless fronting Monster Magnet? It does, right?

The Freeks are this world’s version of that craziness. This album is pervasively and aggressively psychedelic protopunk just a few notches shy of evil. Easy Out is probably the most commercially accessible track, a snarly teenage rocker that wouldn’t sound out of place on School’s Out, but most of the album is pure, headphonemelting space rock. You’ll feel like you’ve fallen over in one of those bouncy houses and you can’t get back up but you don’t even care. This is some groovy upside-down shit.