Hey all, it’s been a slow summer around here, but I should be getting back into the swing of posting over the next few weeks. To ease myself in, I’ll start with something easy and formulaic: a lament about a record that fails to live up to the hopes inspired by one fantastic song.
This time around the culprit is Love Psychedelico. Half Japanese-half British, drawing heavily from both languages, with bright hooks and pop explosions. I fell in love with them a few years back on hearing “Your Song” which drew together the very best of all those components.
So I was excited to hear they had a new album This Is Love Psychedelico which was getting some very positive reviews. Sadly, when I investigated further, it turned out to just be a compilation of tracks from their old albums (all of which I’d sampled but none of which I own) packaged for an international release. Even more sadly, as I listened I realized that I don’t really like the band so much as I just adore the one track.
Apart from “Your Song,” it all falls a little flat for me. There’s nothing strictly wrong here. It just feels a little bit too heavy. Maybe it’s a deliberate choice that just doesn’t speak to me. Many of these songs draw much more from the 70s classic rock genre than the far more J-pop friendly space occupied by “Your Song.”
But even where the genre differences fade, there’s still something missing that’s difficult to define. It’s always sad when you realize just how hard it is to capture that perfect sound – to make a song delve into you so deep that it makes your whole body sing. The best songs sound effortless, but if it were that easy they would be easy to reproduce. And sadly, there are a lot of bands who strike gold once but can never quite capture the same lightning in a bottle again.
Perhaps, for me at least, Love Psychedelico is simply one of those bands.
Your Song – Love Psychedelico