PSYCHEDELIC PROG

Take a trip with ROB HUGHES as he seeks out the latest mind-expanding music.

If travel broadens the mind, it can also broaden the sound. This is evidently true for Allah Las, who describe their terrific fourth album LAHS (Mexican Summer) as both an audio postcard and “a soundtrack to the past five years or so”. The Los Angeles quartet have toured extensively over time, funnelling their experiences into eclectic songs that incorporate krautrocking vamps (Electricity), Os Mutantes-style weirdness (Royal Blues) and, as on the wonderful Keeping Dry, warm psychrock grooves.

Meanwhile, prolific fellow Californians Oh Sees follow up last year’s Smote Reverser with the expansive Face Stabber (Castle Face). This double opus finds singer/guitarist John Dwyer dialling down the proggier elements of their last album in favour of heavy psych-funk jams, frenetic garage punk and the kind of hardcore electronica that takes up where Suicide left off. It’s as breathless as it is brilliant, with room for a little Rush-like deliberation on Fu Xi.

Marginally less intense is Are You Nervous? (Hassle), the second outing from Londonbased four-piece, Swedish Death Candy. It’s a far more focused effort than their debut, the savagery of their acid/stoner riffs tempered by more melodic meditations (Always; the almost wistful Slowly) and a rare detour into synthetic abstraction on Space Holiday. Elsewhere, they’re reassuringly heavy on standouts Modern Child and A Date With Caligula.

There’s plenty more powerhousery on Dead Feathers’ All Is Lost (Ripple), a hugely impressive debut that follows in the wake of a self-titled EP. The Chicago five-piece are clearly in thrall to the golden dawn of prog and psychedelia, reaching deep into the late 60s and early 70s for inspiration.

Their chief weapon is frontwoman Marissa Allen, whose remarkable voice recalls both Grace Slick and Sonja Kristina in their prime, especially on the scorched acid-blues of Smoking Gun and the rumbling With Me. Best of all is At The Edge, which starts off all Sandy-era Fairport before building into a Jefferson Airplane-ish monster.

New Zealand’s Mermaidens are more resolutely pop, though their avant-psych leanings make them a happily digressive proposition. The trio’s third album, Look Me In The Eye (Flying Nun), offsets exuberant beauties like Millennia with the bittersweet Crying In The Office, trippy fantasia Sleeptalker and the pointed attack of the very fine Bastards.

Finally, for those wishing to venture way out into the cosmological beyond, A Universe That Roasts Blossoms For A Horse (tak:til/ Glitterbeat) is the latest piece of experimentation from Solvenian ‘imaginary folk’ trio, Širom. Free jazz, musique concrète and psychedelic trance merge on songs with killer titles like A Washed Out Boy Taking Fossils From A Frog Sack.