Sunburned Hand Of The Man

★★★★

Pick A Day To Die

THREE-LOBED. CD/DL/LP

New Weird America standard-bearers freak out, in perpetuity.

Nearly 20 years ago, as acid folk became briefly fashionable, a wilder and less assimilable music followed it out of the US underground. Hairy commune jams proliferated, along with an untethered sense of psychedelic possibility that meant these artists would never enjoy – or want – the relative success of, say, Devendra Banhart. Nevertheless, a few hardier free spirits have endured, none better than fearsome Massachusetts collective Sunburned Hand Of The Man. Their catalogue can be thrilling but forbidding; almost 150 albums are currently available on Bandcamp.

Pick A Day To Die, however, might be one of the very best, and a neat entry point for new explorers. Many of the evershifting band’s modes are here – motorik ritual; weirdo backwoods funk; eldritch fingerpicking; Beefheartian gibber; noise-jam exorcism – stitched together in uncharacteristically cohesive fashion. Hold tight, too, for the last-minute arrival of J Mascis, channelling Eddie Hazel, on closer Prix Fixe.