New bands look back to the psychedelic era
By MICHAEL GILTZ
Saturday, February 9th 2008
Grooves are groovy. That's the vibe of the bands that are mining the soul of the psychedelic era for inspiration. Jersey City denizens the Black Hollies are celebrating their upcoming second CD, "Casting Shadows," with three shows in three days in the New York area, starting with Magnetic Field in Brooklyn on Friday. You'll hear sitars and fuzzy bass on truly psychedelic numbers like "Paisley Pattern Ground." They join groups like Midlake, the Coral, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings and countless others who revel in the classic sounds of classic rock.
Vancouver collective Black Mountain - with their acclaimed second album, "In the Future" - stomp through the '70s at the Bowery Ballroom on Feb. 22, complete with a 17-minute epic called "Bright Lights."
And the Welsh band Super Furry Animals, which plays the Bowery Ballroom Feb. 25 in support of the new CD "Hey Venus!," are sure to offer their usual trippy light-and-slide show to complement their tunes.
"A lot of newer bands feel like they have to make a point by sounding different," says Matt Camirind, the bassist in Back Mountain (and, in the current vogue for multitasking, the bassist in Blood Meridian as well).
"I make music that I like listening to and yeah, we like a lot of older music - country, blues and classic rock. Music is like a rock 'n' roll fantasy. You grew up worshiping music and the people who made it. I want to feel the way it feels to make that music. We're not trying to break ground. We're just trying to have fun."
Name-checking bands from 40 years ago makes sense for a group like the Black Hollies, since that's the music they've always listened to and loved.
"I hold my mom responsible," says Black Hollies lead singer Justin Angelo Morey. "She always had great soul records and the Beatles and the Yardbirds."
Morey also soaked up classic tunes via the radio.
"As a child growing up in Jersey City, you had to like rap," says the 31-year-old. "But I'd listen to the Rhythm Revue [radio show] every Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Jazz 88. It became routine. I'd be in bed, hanging out, having breakfast, looking through books and having it on in the background. Then later, I'd be in a car and go to thrift stores, like the Salvation Army on Martin Luther King in Jersey City. We'd find really amazing '60s gear because nobody was picking it up and Edwin Starr records for a dollar."
Black Mountain has picked up increasing press attention in the U.K. and "In the Future" will clearly dominate Camirind's life for the next two years. Like so many groups, it's a shifting collective, with everyone seemingly involved in two or three other bands. "It's perfect because I can tour with these guys until we're thoroughly sick of each other and then I can switch to Blood Meridian," jokes Camirind.
Like Camirind (who is a health-care worker when not touring), Morey has a day job, at the Al Richards Homemade Chocolates company. But he doesn't do everything old school. The Black Hollies will have a song featured in the new Dell computer TV ads, following quickly on an online Nike campaign with Lance Armstrong and another song being highlighted on the Denis Leary drama "Rescue Me." True to form, however, Morey doesn't have a DVR and never saw it.
"Unfortunately, I was working the night it came on and missed it," says Morey. "I have a black-and-white TV with the rabbit ears and a dial. I don't even have an iPod."
The Black Hollies play Magnetic Field in Brooklyn on Friday. 97 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn; (718) 834-0069.
www.myspace.com/theblackhollies
