Have You Heard the News ?

Description

Eight years after the stunning EP Somewhere Anywhere, The Mad Walls return to revive psychedelic rock with this magnificent, heavy, and floating debut LP, effortlessly groovy and sublimely sinuous. Driven by a bone-shaking acoustic guitar, visceral drums, wonderfully trippy bass lines, and the disposable perfection of Christopher Mercado's haunting voice. Pure rock n' roll but devoid of clichés. Informed, yet in no way by the early works of MC5, Skip Spence, Sonic Youth, Syd Barrett, and Jefferson Airplane while they were still all together. Recorded on tape in Mercado's garage, it has a DIY heart with epic results across sixteen songs. Only one track exceeds three minutes, and some are less than thirty seconds. "It's just chatter about life and human feelings. Stylized human expression." - This is Christopher's understated explanation of his playful and hallucinatory storytelling. It opens with the galloping attack of drums and bass in WHO WANTS TO DIE FOR RELIGION. It moves through the furious distorted acoustic guitar solo in I TELL YOU HOW I FEEL. The dizzying, elastic time-stretching of COOL TRIPPER. The brief funky detour of IN YOUR DREAM YOU ARE NOONE. The almost lush and cinematic SEVEN DAYS that evokes Serge Gainsbourg through Moby Grape. The floating prowess of HIP COMMA and the groovy raga of MAKA THE NATIVE, which features not one but two "breath solos." CLOUDS OF DUST is a fragment of skeletal Krautrock, and There Only is a bright psych-pop single. The final track APPLES closes the album with a nervous twelve-bar blues and a killer psych guitar break. Somehow, the MAD WALLS manage to be stunning and sharp as a blade. Meticulously detailed yet effortless. Smartly and stupidly whipped. And as we said at the beginning, it's simply magnificent...