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Hooveriii: Water For The Frogs – album review

Hooveriii Water For The Frogs The Reverberation Appreciation Society Available now Hooveriii (pronounced Hoover 3) hit our shores with their sophomore album of prog psych garage from Levitation Austin / Reverberation Appreciation Society. The psych machine is getting stronger by the day reckons Wayne AF Carey… Music is ever evolving as the scene is getting […]

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HooveriiiHooveriii: Water For The Frogs – album review

Water For The Frogs

The Reverberation Appreciation Society

Available now

Louder Than War Bomb Rating 4

Hooveriii (pronounced Hoover 3) hit our shores with their sophomore album of prog psych garage from Levitation Austin / Reverberation Appreciation Society. The psych machine is getting stronger by the day reckons Wayne AF Carey…

Music is ever evolving as the scene is getting bored in lockdown and the genres are splicing from all those little melting pots across the world, looking for that part of escapism in isolation with some thrilling experimentation. Hooverii are one of those bands that take it further along with garage weirdos Oh Sees, Holy Wave, Dead Meadows and Death Valley Girls. A great collective in it’s own right. Water For The Frogs is a strange collective of songs full of nice undertones. Influences by Iggy’s The Idiot, Soft Machine and Berlin era Bowie show throughout this hazy platter.

Opening track Cindy is a haze of a tune full of melody, a deep wobbly bassline and a proper catchy riff that floats in and out of those haunting vocals to produce a nice psych feel. A great exercise in drumming unfolds in a nice crash towards the end which peters out nicely. Control has a top as fuck riff at the start that motors in to a Soft Machine like drone that buzzes the senses. A real nod to the Kraut Rock scene here delivered smoothly with some ethereal keyboards that nibble at your ears. Hang Em High is a weird as fuck piece of psychedelia that takes you on a trip with it’s upbeat garage sound and spaced out vocals. An ear worm of sound effects shatter the mind and there’s a great buzz guitar riff going in matched with those tribal drums. Top stuff.

Shooting Star builds slowly with a great reverb sound kicking in with a slow tribal beat and stoner vocals that echo around, like the feeling you have after a hard hit on a bong. A nod to Spacemen 3 here and the early sounds of the British Shoegaze scene. A real tune to mellow your soul and chill out to. We’re Both Lawyers is a noodling instrumental of Krautrock repetitiveness and has shadows of early Floyd in the mix until it starts going mental three minutes with a mindmelt of noise that slumps back down into a slow burning funk. Erasure cranks it back up with some great double drumming and goes a bit Hawkwind due to the great hazed effects going on throughout. Another haunting bit of psychedelia that keeps you hooked right until the climax.

Gone starts like the funky drummer has entered the building with a Byrds like guitar sound that guides you until the vocals kick in and then you’re in King Gizzard territory. A weird number that has loads of pace and excitement. The bass line keeps the whole thing together and it all stops in the middle for some John Carpenter-esque stuff four minutes in with that Assault On Precinct 13 style tunage that melts into something Jason Pierce would love to bits. Almost 10 minutes of intelligent psychedelia that keeps you hooked from start to finish.

It looks like 2021 is going to become the year that Psych made a mark on a new audience. We all know Tame Impala lit the touchpaper 10 years ago with Innerspeaker, yet this new breed of bands that are coming out of Melbourne, Austin, LA and of course Liverpool with The Coral belting out a double album soon, are bringing us exciting sounds once more. I like my post punk, my hip hop and all these new young bands coming out at the moment yet my head is being fucked up by psych again. They say music comes in cycles? It certainly does and it’s a good time to put away the anger and mellow out until the venues are open once more…

Words by Wayne Carey, Reviews Editor for Louder Than War. His author profile is here

Source: louderthanwar.com

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