A Rare Chance to Hear Japanese Psychedelic Band Kikagaku Moyo This Weekend

Japanese band Kikagaku Moyo distill some of the best psychedelic influences of the past half-century. Their songs are long, expansive and shift between eras and genres with a hypnotic elegance. Their latest album House in the Tall Grass is streaming at Spotify. They’re hitting New York this weekend for a couple of shows; tonight, Sept 30 they’ll be at Sunnyvale at 10:30 PM for $15. Tomorrow night, Oct 1 they’ll be at Berlin at 9ish for three bucks less.

The album’s opening cut, Green Sugar kicks off with a dramatic, savagely meticulous flurry of tremolo-picking, then hits a strutting groove, an echoey web of Tomo Katsurada and Daoud Popal’s guitars and Ryu Kurosawa’s sitar over bassist Kotsuguy’s catchy, upper-register bass hook, like a gentler Brian Jonestown Massacre. Spare, twinkling bells and chimes add to the surreallistic, nocturnal ambience until suddenly the guitars take the song down toward metal.

Drummer Go Kurosawa’s careful, precise rimshots propel the jangly Kogarashi, a mashup of electrified Indian folk and Malian duskcore. Spare icicle piano drips between the reverb-drenched acoustic guitar mesh of Old Snow, White Sun. The band builds a sparsely lingering, slow post-Velvets ultraviolet ambience in the one-chord instrumental jam Melted Crystal, then picks up the pace with Dune, a catchy, upbeat Japanese folk theme, resonant Pink Floyd grandeur over a jaunty surf-tinged groove.

Pastorally trippy echoes of the Church, Jenifer Jackson, Sergeant Pepper-era Beatles and late 60s Grateful Dead filter throughout the album’s most epic track, Silver Owl, up to a surprise doom-metal crescendo. The group follows that with the swirly spacerock interlude Fata Morgana.

The tricky rhythms and surfy guitar of Trad offer no hint that the band’s about to take its Japanese folk melody into majestic Pink Floyd territory, then rise to White Light/White Heat freakout. The album closes with the gentle, fingerpicked folk-rock Cardigan Song. If there’s any band out there who sound like they could pull off a double live album, it’s these guys.

A Rare Brooklyn Show by One of New York’s Funnest, Most Esoteric, Psychedelic Bands

As far as esoteric jambands go, Tribecastan have few if any rivals. The group’s ringleaders, multi-instrumentalists John Kruth and Jeff Greene have led a rotating cast of characters since this wild, psychedelic beast first made its appearance on the streets of lower Manhattan about a half-dozen years ago. To try to pigeonhole or categorize them would be useless. Like their closest comparison, Hazmat Modine, jazz is a frequent reference point, but where that group uses horns, this crew employs a vast arsenal of central Asian, Middle Eastern and African stringed and percussion instruments along with a rock rhythm section. And they’re funny – if Spike Jones and Juan Esquivel aren’t direct influences, they’re distant relatives. The group’s latest album, Goddess Polka Dottess – streaming at Bandcamp – is their most straightforward and psychedelic rock-oriented release. They’ve got a rare Brooklyn show coming up this Friday, Sept 9 at 8 PM at Shapeshifter Lab; cover is $12.

Tribecastan also distinguish themselves as one of New York’s most prolific bands. The latest album is a bit of a change from their previous output in that most of the songs are by Kruth. The opening number, Repo Rodeo follows a droll, cartoonish, cajun-flavored sprint fueled by Kruth’s mandolin, Greene’s vibraphone, the horns of baritone saxophonist Claire Daly, trumpeter John Turner, alto saxophonist Premik Russell Tubbs and trombonist Chris Morrow until keyboardist Kenny Margolis leads them down a Middle Eastern rabbit hole. From there the group keeps the Middle Eastern noir psychedelia going with Konjo – the first of two songs by Greene here – driven by Kruth’s watery electric mando and Eric Halvorson’s tumbling drums.

Bassist Ray Peterson’s snappy riff opens Bangalorious, a wry mashup of latin soul and Bollywood – a sitar, played by Kruth, finally makes a cameo. Vagabundo is an unlikely successful hybrid of creepy klezmer and dub ska – imagine a Belorussian James Bond theme. The even more macabre Charnel Waltz brings to mind Kruth’s other, more stripped-down group, Villa Delirium.

Majestic Ganesh, one of the band’s few vocal numbers, pokes playful, Beatlesque fun at the Indian pantheon. The band takes a turn into brassy psych-funk with Trouble in a Fur Coat and follow that with the silly calyspo flute tune Myrtle & Mable. Then they march through the somewhat subtler Zoli’s Strut, with its microtonal banks of Asian reed instruments.

The Mahakala Stomp, Greene’s second track here, is a catchy hi-de-ho swing number with boisterous solos all around. (you’ll have to supply the band intros yourself). The Surfing Swami makes a return to Beatlesque Indian psychedelia, followed by Kilopatra, the album’s best and most Middle Eastern track, awash in uneasy, icy mando, snakecharmer flute and biting banjo. The next track, Borislav, a slinky Balkan brass tune with a hilariously over-the-top break that’s too funny to give away here, is another real winner. Constantly shifting from one instrument to another, Tribecastan are very entertaining to watch onstage, with Kruth affecting a mad pied-piper-on-acid persona.

Bewitchingly Slinky, Darkly Psychedelic Cumbia from Bareto

For those of us who equate minor keys with excitement and passion rather than sadness, slinky Peruvian psychedelic cumbia band Bareto’s fantastic album El Impredecible is streaming at Spotify. And while they don’t seem to be hitting New York soon, they have a US tour coming up.

Like their northern counterparts Chicha Libre – who are a big reason why cumbia became the world’s default party music – Bareto reference the classic, surfy sounds of the late 60s and 70s while adding their own distinctive, equally psychedelic touches. The album’s opening track, La Voz Del Sinchi has the feel of a Los Destellos classic, but with more of a late 70s feel, lead guitarist Joaquín Mariátegui playing his eerily chromatic chords with a shivery, icy chorus-box tone. The album’s second track, La Pantalla (The Screen) has one of the funniest videos made this century: for anyone who’s come home trashed at 4 AM and clicked through to Univision, or Telemundo, or Venevision, this parody will have you laughing til your face hurts. Lead singer Mauricio Mesones’ deadpan vocal downplays its caustic commentary on moronic south-of-the-border tv. If you think that American networks are retarded, go a little further south. The creepy carnival organ drives it home.

The title track takes a sardonically bouncy detour toward shuffling Veracruz folk, with a lingering psychedelic edge. Likewise, Mariátegui’s No Es Para Mi (It’s Not for Me) has a sunny tropical feel, in this case a wah guitar-fueled shout out to Os Mutantes-style bossa-pop. Then the band completely flips the script with the snaky, deliciously carnivalesque La Negra y el Fantasma (The Girl and the Ghost), also by Mariátegui. The interweave of the spare but resonant reverb guitars – that’s Rolo Gallardo on the other one – along with Miguel Ginocchio’s accordion and funeral organ, over the percussion and drums of Jorge Olazo and Sergio Sarria, is intoxicatingly tasty.

The southwestern gothic dub-flavored Bombo Baile takes awhile to get going, then the guitar starts shooting off sparks, a surreal, mind-warping mashup of vintage C&W and Los Destellos’ six-string legend Enrique Delgado. Similarly, the ominous, lingering Viejita Guarachera goes in a dub direction, referencing the Specials’ ska-noir classic, Ghost Town over Jorge Giraldo’s classic roots reggae bass.

Mamá Motelo, by Gallardo, pushes the trippy swirl along, its surf guitar multitracks evoking classic Lima chicha acts like Los Mirlos and Los Diablos Rojos. Susana Baca guests on vocals on the uneasily atmospheric El Loco, an extremely unlikely but unexpectedly successful mashup of traditional festejo folk and the Church’s late 80s spacerock. La Semilla (The Seed) has a twinkling, nocturnal Hawaiian vibe, while the album’s closing cut, País de las Maravillas (Miracle Land) has the loping groove and trebly guitar textures of a classic Los Destellos hit. Bands like this just make you want to forget about American rock and head for the mountains and the jungle where chicha was first fermented.

Speaking of psychedelic cumbia, it’s worth sending out a special shout to Consumata Sonidera, who literally stopped traffic at their show uptown at 125th St. and the highway a couple of weeks ago. When they took the little stage at the park on the river, there was hardly anyone there. By the time they left, almost down to the second that the rain started, cars had pulled over along with bike riders and seemingly half the people making their walk home, not expecting to hear anything like this fun, eclectic, trippy low-key set with just guitar, bass, percussion and frontman Bruno Navarro’s diamond-cutting alto sax.

Sandcatchers Play a Magical Mix of Psychedelia, the Middle East and Pastoral Jazz

Guitarist Yoshie Fruchter has been involved with a ton of great projects, from John Zorn’s Abraxas to Frank London’s big band, but his most intriguing one may be his own. Fruchter plays oud in Sandcatchers, who could be described as a Middle Eastern pastoral Americana jamband. Their hypnotic, intricately intertwining, psychedelic instrumental mini-epics are unlike anything else in New York. The only group they bear any resemblance to, and that’s because of Myk Freedman’s resonant lapsteel, is the much louder if similarly psychedelic metal band Greek Judas (who have a gig coming up at Barbes on August 25 at 10). Sandcatchers have a weekly residency at Cheryl’s Restaurant, 236 Underhill Ave. in Ft. Greene on Wednesdays starting at around 8, which is where they’ll be tomorrow, August 17. There’s no cover charge; the closest train is actually the 2/3 to Brooklyn Museum.

Their show at Barbes a week ago was packed with all sorts of fun. They opened with a spiky, misterioso oud intro over drummer Yonadav Halevy’s misty cymbals and washes of pedal steel. From there they hit an understatedly somber minor-key groove with some wry tradeoffs between the oud and Michael Bates’ bass, with a trick ending and then a moodily scampering outro lit up with lonesome trainwhistle steel. After that they did what could have been a Macedonian highway theme, Fruchter’s purposefully strolling oud over vast, deep-sky atmospherics.

The next number was a slow, summery theme that slowly and deliberately moved into the shadows, much in the same vein as Big Lazy‘s big-sky cinematic mood pieces, with an enigmatically tiptoeing bass solo over sotto-voce clip-clop percussion. Halevy had brought a dinner bell, which he used for chuckles on more than one occasion.

The sternly pulsing chromatic anthem after that, with its blasts of steel and then a searing solo, was the closest thing they played to Greek Judas’ rembetiko metal. After that, Bates hinted at a classic Geezer Butler riff throughout a long bass intro that kicked off a slowly majestic, swaying Middle Eastern number, again shifting dramatically but seamlessly to the Great Midwest and then back with a big crescendo. With the steel going full blast over Fruchter’s elegant, purposeful oud, they were like a Middle Eastern Friends of Dean Martinez.

Halevy had tuned his kit like a series of goblet drums, ramping up the boomy, mysterious ambience to introduce the number after that, a mashup of blazing southern rock and what could have been a Greek hill country dance. After that they contrasted with a gentle, backbeat-driven nocturne. Then they got a little funky, winding up their set with their most eclectically expansive tune. These and many other flavors may appear in the mix tomorrow night.

Heaters Bring Their Envelopingly Tuneful Psychedelia to South Williamsburg

Heaters‘ new album Baptistina – soon to be streaming at Bandcamp, and available on both green and black vinyl – further cements their reputation as one of the world’s most consistently excellent dark retro psychedelic bands. What’s most impressive about them is that a close listen reveals how seldom they change chords. They can vamp out on one for minutes on end and it never gets boring because there are so many interesting things going on, texturally and melodically: repeaterbox echoes flitting through the mist, shifting sheets of feedback and jagged twelve-string guitar incisions in contrast with an enveloping quality that seems to draw on Indian classical music as much as it does classic 60s psychedelia. The trio – guitarist Nolan Krebs, guitarist/bassist Andrew Tamlyn and drummer Joshua Korf – also shift tempos on a dime, making things all the more strange and compelling. They’re playing the album release show at Baby’s All Right on August 5 at 10 PM; cover is $10.

The obvious influence is the 13th Floor Elevators, but there’s also a little early Country Joe & the Fish as well as Brian Jonestown Massacre in the mix as well as a whole slew of other influences. The sonics are period-perfect: guitars awash in reverb with a clanging, slightly tinny vintage Vox amp attack, trebly melodic bass hanging back with the drums. The opening track, Centennial, begins with a Byrdsy jangle and ends with White Light/White Heat guitar freakout .The lushly crescendoing Ara Pacis puts Syd Barrett on a Magical Mystery Tour bus, while the expansive soundscape Orbis brings to mind early Nektar.

Elephant Turner pounces along on a tricky fuzz bass riff, sinuous guitar interweave overhead. Garden Eater sets a nimbly scampering bassline over a steady, swirly stomp and then floats off into spacerock. Another catchy fuzztone bassline fuels Dali, which then sinks in a morass of trippy waves. Then the band picks things up again with Mango, referencing both the Kinks as well as early 70s proto-metal.

The resonant spacerock ambience returns as the band sets the controls for the heart of the sun in Voyager. The album winds up with the teasingly loopy instrumental Turkish Gold and then the catchy, propulsively tumbling Seafoam, Del Shannon on brown acid, winidng up with the longest, most searing guitar solo here. This is music for people who won’t settle for merely being stoned: it’s a soundtrack for getting high as a kite.

Their excellent, somewhat more kinetic previous album Holy Water Pool is also streaming at Bandcamp, for the most part. Kamikaze, a slowly simmering, echo-drenched minor-key neo-Elevators number, opens it, bass rising as the chorus winds up, twelve-string guitar piercing the reverb cloud. There’s also the loping and then frantic spaghetti western blues of Master Splinter; the careenng Highway 61 vamp Sanctuary Blues; Propane, with its spiky/drony neo-Velvets sway and artfully menacing rhythmic shifts. the jangly, catchy Hawaiian Holiday and its playful tv theme references; the uneasy Bakersfield twang-influenced Detonator Eyes; Bad Beat, a mashup of early Pretty Things, Brian Jonestown Massacre and Radio Birdman; the starlit stoner soul of Gum Drop; Honey, a Blues Magoos/Count Five hybrid; Cap Gun, which very cleverly nicks the chords from a new wave-era cheeseball hit; and Dune Ripper, part BJM, part Byrds. The band takes their time with each of these, although they don’t go on nearly as long as that previous sentence.

A Free Saturday Night Brooklyn Show by Psychedelic Desert Rock Guitarslinger Bombino

Fiery Tuareg jamband leader and lead guitar wizard Omara “Bombino” Moctar lives on the road. Over the years, he’s also been able to put out a surprisingly diverse series of albums that continue to push the envelope and change the face of Saharan psychedelic guitar music. His latest album, Azel – meaning “roots” in his native Tamasheq and streaming at his music page – is a lot more terse and crystallized than you migiht expect from a master of the recently resurgent art of lead guitar. He and his five-piece band are playing a free show at 7:30 PM this Saturday night, July 23 at 7:30 PM at Prospect Park Bandshell. Femi Kuti – Fela’s kid – leads his Afrobeat band afterward sometime around 9.

Recorded by Dirty Projectors’ David Longstreth over a ten-day period in Woodstock, the album’s production thankfully doesn’t gloss over Bombino’s signature edge and bite. If anything, the sound is enhanced by increased bass  presence along with crystalline percussion balanced in the corners of the mix. Although Bombino has made it clear that this album is heavily influenced by classic roots reggae, that doesn’t come through as clearly as it could. The songs here, many of them familiar from concerts over the past couple of years, are a lot more dynamic than your typical rootsy two-chord jam, typically keeping things closer to the ground than the long improvisational firestorms that Bombino is known for onstage.

The opening track, Akhar Zaman (This Moment) is a typical blend of catchy and hypnotic, although Bombino’s Tamasheq lyrics address the harsh toll cultural imperialism has taken on his native land’s arts and culture. Iwaranagh (We Must) is even catchier, centered around Bombino’s penchant for playing desert riffs within the structure of American rock chord changes and hooks. The third track, the all-acoustic Inar (If You Know tHow Much I Love You) benefits from Longstreth’s beefed-up production.

Tamiditine Tarhanam (I Tell You,My Love) returns to blazing, distortion-fueled desert rock, the bandleader’s rapidfire hammer-on riffage bringing to mind Vieux Farka Toure. Timtar (Memories)  sounds like that same song capoed up the guitar neck, its call-and-response lyrics contemplating a relationship on the rocks.

From its ominous, distantly Sabbath-inflected solo guitar intro to its jagged, similarly dark reggae groove and long, grim sprint to the finish line (or the grave), Iyat Ninhay/Jaguar (A Great Desert I Saw) reflects the imminent danger of getting lost in the Sahara’s endless expanse. The gently exploratory, acoustic Igmayagh Dum (My Lover) makes a striking contrast. The hushed acoustic ambience grows even duskier with the understatedly elegaic Ashuhada (Martyrs of the First Rebellion), the album’s most trad track.

Bombino plugs in again, seamlessly blending his tube-amped, distorted multitracks in the hard-hitting, anthemic Timidiwa (Friendship). The album winds up with the mutedly hypnotic, acoustic Naqqim Dagh Timshar (We Are Left in This Abandoned Place). If Tinariwen are the Grateful Dead of desert rock (musically at least), then Bombino is the style’s Jefferson Airplane – or, as far as cross-pollination is concerned, its Ravi Shankar. Psychedelic music fans in New York would be crazy to miss Saturday night’s show, especially since lately there always seems to be plenty of room in the arena. And, oh yeah, the concert is free.

The Night Beats Bring Their Acid-Warped Soul and Garage Rock Vamps to Williamsburg

Has there been any album awash in and radiating as much reverb as the Night Beats‘ Who Sold My Generation released in the past…um…couple of decades? They put reverb on everything, except the growly bass. Otherwise, every other element in the mix, from the guitars to the drums to the vocals, takes about an extra second to filter out. The result is as trippy as the band’s songs are catchy, a throwback to the gonzo early days of mid-60s acid rock, equally informed by classic soul and garage sounds. And audiences have responded: if there’s ever been an example of how much filthy lucre there is in great music, consider the Night Beats’ success. They play good venues coast to coast, and are headlining a solid psychedelic twinbill on July 16 at 10ish at Rough Trade, with neo-Stooges rockers Acid Dad opening at 9. General admission is $12.

The album’s opening track, Celebration kicks off with frontman Danny Lee Blackwell’s multitracked guitars panning the speakers, and funny samples of some British guy commenting on how the tape recorder is a toy to be cast away with funny hats after the party. A searing, bluesy guitar solo builds behind the washes of fuzz and reverb, then segues into the strutting Power Child, a one-chord jam that explodes in a flurry of drummer James Traeger’s cymbals and reverb on the chorus, a shrieking wah guitar lead blasting over Jakob Bowden’s catchy, funky bass.

The band leaves the vamps behind for the hooky Right Wrong, a booze-soaked lost-love scenario that builds to an anthemically burning Brian Jonestown Massacre-style groove, up to the guitar solo out. Likewise, No Cops follows a pounding one-chord neo-Velvets pulse, a more ornate take on what the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion made their mark with twenty years ago. Porque Manana works a similar vamp with latin soul tinges and another rippling, purposeful guitar solo. And Sunday Mourning differentiates itself from the Velvets classic not only with a slight title change but also its anthemically crescendoing, bluesily shuffling drive and searing, sunbaked wah guitars.

Shangri Lah veers on and off a fiery spaghetti western gallop, pretty much a dead ringer for something from the Love catalog circa the Da Capo album. Burn to Breathe pairs unhinged Country Joe & the Fish guitars over a midtempo sway as the drums cluster and rumble: “You stare at the wall and your heart stops,” Blackwell intones nonchalantly. The band add punchy brass to Bad Love, an ominous soul-clap number with Tex-Mex touches.

Last Train to Jordan follows an endlessly echoey psychedelic strut tangent beneath toxic exhaust trails of guitar, while Turn the Lights picks up the pace with echoes of gutter blues. The album winds up on a high note with the pouncing, Middle Eastern-tinged Egypt Berry, a twisted mashup of Monkees and Paint It Black era Stones. Take a trip and never leave Williamsburg with these guys this Saturday night.

Balkan Psychedelic Band Choban Elektrik Sets Park Slope on Fire: Bed-Stuy is Next

More about that killer original Balkan music twinbill at Friends & Lovers in Bed-Stuy on June 15 at 8 PM, with psychedelic Balkan organ band Choban Elektrik and the elaborate, artful, mighty Serbian-style Raya Brass Band. It’s not clear who’s playing first, but it doesn’t really matter: both put on a wild live show.

Choban Elektrik were part of another ferocious doublebill at the end of April at Barbes, opening for rembetiko metal band Greek Judas. The quartet – Jordan Shapiro on organ, Jesse Kotansky on violin, Dave Johnson on bass and Phil Kester on drums – opened with a familiar Madeconian folk song, switching from major to minor, violin in tandem with the organ through some labyrinthine tempo shifts, Shapiro adjusting his textures from swirly roto to smoky hot. He left the smoke on through the similarly knotty, leaping and bounding, ebullient instrumental after that, bass bubbling, drums tumbling and careening as the organ spiraled upward. It’s tempting to say that their performance was sort of the Balkan equivalent of Emerson, Lake and Palmer doing Moussorgsky, but the keyboard timbres and enigmatic cascades were probably closer to the Doors – with a violinist from ELO, maybe.

Shapiro sang the next song, a rousing tune that for some reason sounded like amped-up Jamaican rocksteady with a more complicated groove and a hypnotically vamping, glimmering, upper-register Ray Manzarek-style organ solo. Appropriately, Shapiro switched to an echoey Riders on the Storm electric piano patch for the next number as the rhythm section delivered a sliced-and-diced gallop. A gritty, insistent, distorto organ crescendo gave way to uneasily sailing violin that surged forward toward shivery In the Hall of the Mountain King menace. A molten-metal, altered organ cha-cha practically segued into an organ arrangement of a punchy, pouncing Macedonian brass tune, then a number that sounded like a Balkan take on Rare Earth: surreal to the extreme. It’s almost funny to consider that such as tuneful band as this could be a spinoff of Zappa cover act Project/Object.

Greek Judas headlined. They haven’t changed their set much since they first started, but they haven’t really needed to since their songs are so creepy, and colorful, and the band jams the hell out of them. As is their custom, bandleader Wade Ripka alternated between distorted lapsteel and Strat, running each through a big Fender amp – inarguably the loudest band ever to play Barbes. Bassist Nick Cudahy and drummer Chris Stromquist wore deer and moose masks, respectively, if memory serves right (it was late; Kate kept bringing beers and that was impossible to resist). Guitarist Adam Good did not. Frontman/horn player Quince Marcum was decked out in a Byzantine gothic monk’s outfit: with his bushy beard, he really looked the part. With one long, searing, Middle Eastern-flavored jam after another and Marcum doing his usual bit explaining the Greek lyrics in detail, they kept the drinkers in the house through tales of lost love, drug smuggling, henpecked husbands and crack whores on the Athens streets in the late 1920s. Greek Judas bring their trippy attack to Leftfield this Saturday night, June 11 at 10 PM, where they threaten to be the loudest act ever to play there as well.

Texas Art-Rock Jamband and Neil Young Collaborators Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real in Williamsburg Tonight

If the idea of blowing off work or school today to wait for hours in the suddenly scorching sun for this evening’s free MOMA Summergarden event – where the new Neil Young album is being premiered over the PA at 6 out behind the museum – doesn’t appeal to you, there’s a relatively inexpensive alternative tonight at Brooklyn Bowl where Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real, who back Young on the record, are playing their own stuff at around 9. Cover is a reasonable $15. That a band that packs stadiums coast to coast hasn’t sold out this comparatively smaller venue testifies to something really troubling as far as live music in New York is concerned.

The group’s latest album Something Real is streaming at Spotify. The opening track, Surprise, is exactly that, kicking off with a wry Pink Floyd quote and then hitting a bluesy metal sway over an altered version of the hook from Sabbath’s Paranoid .Then they make a doublespeed Blue Oyster Cult boogie of sorts out of it. The title track is a straight-up boogie: “I got tired of trying to please everybody…you’re just a name in a picture frame,” the bandleader rails, then bassist Corey McCormick, percussionist Tato Melgar and drummer Anthony LoGerfo take it down for a searing, blues-infused solo. These guys don’t coast on their bloodlines: Lukas and Micah Nelson play like they really listened to their dad…at his loudest.

Set Me Down on a Cloud has a pretty straight-up, growling Neil-style country-rock sway. Don’t Want to Fly has a similar groove, a dark stoner blues gem that David Gilmour would probably love to have written. Ugly Color is an unlikely successful, epic mashup of Santana slink, Another Brick in the Wall art-pop and BoDeans highway rock. Speaking of the BoDeans, the ballad Georgia is a tensely low-key ringer for something from that band circa 1995.

This brother outfit goes back to boogie blues with the strutting I’ll Make Love to You Any Ol’ Time. Then they blast through Everything Is Fake in a swirling hailstorm of tremolo-picking. The album winds up with an amped-up cover of Scott McKenzie’s famous 1967 janglepop hit San Francisco, Neil Young cameo included. It’s sad how so few children of noteworthy rock musicians have lived up to their parents’ greatness – on the other hand, it’s heartwarming to see these guys join the ranks of Amy Allison (daughter of Mose), the Wallflowers’ Jakob Dylan and Sean Lennon. And these guys rock a lot harder than all of them.

Desert Flower’s Menacing Heavy Psychedelic Debut: One of 2016’s Best Albums

Desert Flower are one of the half-dozen best bands in New York right now. The heavy psychedelic quintet spice their wickedly tight, menacingly careening, darkly individualistic sound with punk, stoner blues, 70s boogie and echoes of gothic rock. They’re also notable for being one of the few psychedelic bands out there fronted by a woman, powerful bluesy wailer/keyboardist Bela Zap Art. What Jefferson Airplane were to San Francisco, 1967 or what Siouxsie & the Banshees were to London, 1985, Desert Flower are to New York in 2016. Their debut ep – streaming at Soundcloud – instantly vaults them into contention for putting out the best album of the year. Right now they’re back in the studio – watch this space for future NYC dates.

Much as Zap Art has Ann Wilson power and intensity, the studio setting here gives her a chance to project far more subtlety than she typically gets a chance to do out in front of the marauding twin-guitar attack of Migue Mendez and Paola Luna. Likewise, bassist Seba Fernandez and drummer Alfio Casale get to show off dynamics that sometimes don’t make it into their high-voltage live show.

The first track, Darketa opens with a wash of guitar sitar before Fernandez’s slinky bassline kicks in and the band sways along, Mendez’s lysergic echoes ringing out against Luna’s gritty attack, Zap Art rising from a wounded, guarded intensity, to trippy lows that she runs through a phaser. As the song builds toward a pulsing peak and Fernandez’s catchy bass hook pans the speakers behind Mendez’s searing lead, it suddenly becomes clear that it’s just a one-chord jam!

Longest Way is a brisk mashup of downstroke postpunk and classic Motor City rock: “Let me take you to the secret place, where nobody can see your face,” Zap Art intones enigmatically. The majestic, haunting Sube sways along over an uneasily pouncing 6/8 groove, an orchestra of guitars channeling ornate Nektar-ish art-rock and MBV dreampop, “Going down on the grey skies,” Zap Art belts ominously.

Tango follows a creepily pulsing southwestern gothic trajectory, fueled by Mendez’s slide guitar and Luna’s lingering, brooding lines. The catchiest of the originals here, Warrior stomps along over an incisive, sarcastically faux-martial groove, with tongue-in-cheek trombone and some tasty, purist blues playing from Mendez.

The centerpiece of the record is Traveler, a towering 6/8 anthem by a friend in Buenos Aires. Zap Art plays macabre washes of sound on her organ as Mendez alternates between fat, vibrato-laden lines and a menacing growl, Luna anchoring it with her murky, watery broken chords. Look for this on the best albums of the year page in December if we make it that far.