Apr 192007
 

Tonight Townsman Saturnismine checks in with his long-promised piece on the future of psychedelic music. Turn off your mind, relax, and read along. I think you’ll dig what he has to say!

Let’s quibble over definitions. We find psychedelia’s genesis in mid-60s pop with The Beatles leading the way. The meandering syrup of “I’m Only Sleeping” and “Rain” ripened into psyche on “Tomorrow Never Knows”, “Strawberry Fields”, “Lucy in the Sky”, and “I Am the Walrus”. We speak of a music that is by turns mimetic of altered states of consciousness or nostalgic of an idealized childhood. Maybe it’s a sort of a sonic equivalent of Lewis Carrol’s words or Dali’s images. Other themes may include space travel or “aeroplane” imagery. Psyche was a music at the interstices of developments in recording, the coming of age of a generation, and other arch practitioners: Piper-era Floyd.

But is this all? I hope I’m being too limiting.

Is this all there is?

Sure, other bands came and went, especially in the ’80s: Plasticland, The 3 O’Clock, Rain Parade. The Dukes of Stratosphere were so much fun that XTC imported some of their side project’s flavor for their most commercially successful albums, Skylarking and Oranges and Lemons, complete with Yellow Submarine-inspired cover art. None of them, however, really did much to expand the vocabulary of the field.

Since then, more bands have tried on psyche for size, too. No need for a list. You know their names. But maybe you haven’t heard of Silver Sunshine.

If not, listen to this song, which is pretty representative of their eponymous debut album.

Silver Sunshine, “Velvet Skies”

Psyche done well, wouldn’t you say? However, upon hearing such an efficient compendium of “by the numbers” psyche clichés, I wondered to myself:

Do I ever again need to hear a new song with lyrics about someone’s uncle or “auntie” (or granny)…riding a bicycle…to the park…or in the sky…with “lots of colors”…on a Sunday…where we can play…or paint…a song sung in an exaggerated British accent that’s either pinched to sound like John Lennon on “I’m Only Sleeping” or distorted to sound John on the second half of “Tomorrow Never Knows”…and which ends with an explosion? I don’t know. But….

As I complained in our recent “biggest disappointment” thread: psyche suggested so many creative possibilities, but its practitioners gave us so little. Seemingly overnight, the most successful devices of the genre ossified into empty convention. But why? And what happened to all those possibilities? What does the future hold for psyche?


Is it on an island, or does it have a relationship to other genres that are vital right now? Can its palette expand, or are mind-altering sonic experiences only to be found elsewhere? Can other styles of music be described as having psychedelic aspects? I remember seeing the word used quite a bit to describe the original lineup of Dinosaur Jr. Is there an expanded definition/use of the word that suggests the genre’s possible revitalization, rather than a slavish imitation of the past? Tell me, RTHers, I need to know what you think about this genre and where its headed.

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  21 Responses to “Whither Goest thou, Psyche?”

  1. I think there is a future for “psyche” but it needs a PR firm to help it out. Psyche is based on what sounds cool when you are tripping, right? For today’s crowd who trips, what are they listening to? That then becomes the Psyche of the future.

    The problem is the the public ties Psyche to an genre of the past and that genre nas been bled dry!

    One point about your comment on XTC/Dukes. I have always said that The Dukes was the worst thing for their career musically. Prior to The Dukes, XTC could always borrow a lot from the 60s without being a fraud. Once The Dukes came out, XTC had to abandon their 60’s chops, since their alter-egos had completely exhausted every trick in the book. They were forced to go in a more modern sound for “Skylarking” and “O&L” (a horrible record)

  2. Mr. Moderator

    To me, psych was about expansion: mind, musical, and so forth. It didn’t matter if the player or listener was tripping, really, but if that’s what it took for anyone’s butt to loosen up, so be it. I think a lot of psych’s best and most significant impulses got swallowed up by prog-rock and even fusion. We often cut on prog for its sometimes absurd dedication to chops, noodling, and elfin lyrical content, but I think it was rock’s attempt at taking psychedelic rock from a mostly blues-based realm into other areas of musicianship. For some listeners, this more than did the trick.

    The “Art Rock” bands, that is, the more progressive bands that still rocked and had an edge of some sort – Roxy Music, Eno, Can, et al – also took the ideas of using the record and studio as the means of expansion and ran with them. To me, both Prog and Art Rock, however you want to split them, were reasonable directions for psych.

    After prog-rock had run its course and Ferry and Eno mellowed beyond the course of inspiring anyone to drop acid and knock out the next 24 hours of their regular lives, what next?

    Through the punk era there were always some bands that picked up on the artsy, studio gimmickry of that Beatles/Floyd tradition – Wire’s 154 album always struck me as a great psychedelic album. There were also, as Art says, bands like Dinosaur Jr, who’d obviously spent lots of time doing bong hits to Hendrix records. All good stuff, but I’m not sure many bands used the studio for all it was worth for mind expansion. To me, the artificiality of psychedelic music is important unless the band can really cook up an organic brew on its own. (Meat Puppets’ Up On the Sun album and Captain Beefheart’s Doc at the Radar Station are two great examples of studio gimmickry-light psych albums, perhaps along the lines of what bands like the Dead and Jefferson Airplane did for their fans in their time.).

    Then what? There’s all that music that accompanied raves in the ’90s. There’s that Stereolab/Spiritualized kind of stuff. I guess that’s all kind of trippy, but whenever I hear that stuff it lacks that extra ooomph of idealism and discovery. Often it sounds more like Eno’s ambient albums than music made with a community-driven sense of discovery. Maybe what I’m saying is it lacks that “cosmic” vibe. Think about it, for how long can you take acid before the cosmic wonderland wears off and you’re just gazing at the hair that grows around your bellybutton?

    One day I’ll have to give those early ’90s bands a better try, and I’ll have to buy one of those experimental Radiohead albums. I do fear the lack of community/human vibes. One of the reasons I love Stephen Malkmus’ Face the Truth album so much is that it uses a number of West Coast psychedelia conventions but there’s a feeling that a real band is playing the stuff and getting off on it as if it’s something that’s exciting them and expanding their musical ideas.

  3. Seems like a dilemma for many genres trying to remain vital. If you want to pursue your creativity within a particular genre, how can you do it without fulfilling some of the hard requirements for that genre? As soon as you start to stretch the boundaries, you’ll be accused of abandoning the rules. Can you be a southern rock band without singing about whiskey? Can you be heavy metal without giving props to Satan? A surf band with no ocean? I like when a genre imposes rules like a chessboard. Bring on more songs about Aunties riding bikes! More trippy songs about MR.(fill in the blank) Otherwise bring out the hyphens.

  4. BigSteve

    Two thoughts for starters:

    You can only do so much with rock instrumentation. 60s psych expanded the sonic palette of rock, but it became a bag of tricks, and there’s only so much space in that bag. The psych music of today and tomorrow is being made with computers, not guitars.

    Isn’t all good music mind-expanding? Is it because early rock was thought of as body music that mid to late 60s rock seemed to feed our heads? I think Little Richard was mind expanding. Mozart too. It would be easy to argue that psychedelic rock was not an expansion of the mind but rather a set of effects that was able to mimic some of the disorienting effects of tripping.

  5. Mr. Moderator

    Good points, BigSteve and Chickenfrank.

    Townsman Chickenfrank, you know I’m all for rules and conventions, but when do they become a hinderance in psychedelic music? Do you want to trip with the guy who does nothing but talk of “the colors!” and “the trails!”?

    Steve, although I agree that all good music is mind expanding, I do think there were some mechanisms at play in the various forms of psychedelic music that made it clear that was the focus. Ever see a Deadhead dance? You’ll know the music of the Dead was not made to encourage good dancing:)

    For me, the dead end is the term itself. It immediately leads people to associate it with tripping, maaaaaaannnnn. The association is undeniable, but if the art of “head musics” (ie, rather than music geared toward the body) is to grow, other neuroreceptors and mechanisms of action must be considered. The old notion of the psyche is a vague thinkg, no?

  6. saturnismine

    wow.

    thanks for the thoughtful comments thus far, rth’ers.

    coupla things: i can’t believe everyone (including myself), has missed my gaffe: it’s “oranges and lemons”, but i wrote “apples and oranges” in my text.

    but the mistake is telling (a semiotician’s field day!): xtc’s use of different fruits to allude to barrett’s song without just using the title over again is a stagnant form of creativity. my mistake of the new name for the old one suggests the short micro-meter distances xtc moved the genre from its source of inspiration. and all of us missing the mistake suggests just how asleep at the wheel we all are where this genre is concerned at present.

    anyway…i’d like to ask chickenfrank if it isn’t the other way around: can you sing about aunties riding bikes in a way that isn’t psyche? i mean, what’s so great about having compartmentalized genres? i get that you like them, but why?

    bigsteve, sure all music is meant to be mind expanding, but not all music (mozart included) directly addresses the issue the way psyche does (even the name suggests that this is “job one” of the genre).

    mod, i was listening to “face the truth” as i was reading your comment. woah…HEH-vee! my mind is blown!

    i have to read everyone’s comments more closely, and will weigh in later. for now, it’s time to hack at my own overwhelming “to do” list.

  7. general slocum

    Big Steve sees trails in Jerri curls… :
    I think Little Richard was mind expanding.

    I think you’ve hit on the slippery multifaceted crux, with your post, Steve. Many people’s most intense memoriesof a trip would be ones where things are just happening, without too much attempt at pushing anything. As soon as there’s a sense that anything is bogus, or less than genuine, it immediately becomes tedious. Is there anything more off the mark than someone coming up and waving their hand in front of your eyes to fuck with you when you’re tripping? That’s what the worst of psychedelia does. (To me XTC Dukes do it annoyingly.) But you can be walking through the San Genaro festival and hear old farts playing Funniculi Funnicula, and find it sublime. So what a tripping person, or a person who’s “butt is loose”® (Mr. Mod) by whatever means, is going to find intense, has fairly little to do with the genre called psychedelic music. Funniculi Funnicula is by any definition not “psychedelic music.” Yet Incense and Peppermints *is*, regardless whether you like it or not. For me, psychedelic music is a narrow term and not a very useful one, if only because it sends me down this very rabbit-hole of semantics. For my two cents, the first albums by Stereolab are far and away more psychedlic than the Dukes or Stratosphere or any of that stuff. To repeat an earlier metaphor, Stereolab made a box, Dukes made a toy.

  8. BigSteve

    Another idea:

    I was thinking about the idea of splitting our experience into separate realms — the mind, the body, the heart, the soul. Maybe part of psych’s problem is its focus on the head to the exclusion of other faculties.

    I stayed out of the debate over English Settlement, but I was thinking while it was happening that in general no other record we would call psychedelic has such a huge, slamming drum sound. For all of its occasionally swirling sounds, English Settlement is more rooted in rhythm than most psych, which is usually more floaty.

    Maybe all good music isn’t mind expanding, or even primarily centered in the mind. Isn’t the soul where great music lives? But then, when psych was being invented, the term soul was reserved for a style of music that was mostly about the body and the heart. Hmmm.

  9. I like compartmentalization when a band has purposely chosen to abide by the rules, and can still come up with something not necessarily new, but still good. We could call every band ever mentioned on this site just Rock and Roll, and ignore that there are characteristics that allow us to create sub-genre descriptions, but that’s no fun. If you want to refer to any band as Psyche, then there must be at least one or two previously established, and agreed upon, ground rules they are following, or you wouldn’t even be able to have a fun debate if they are a good Psyche band. Safe to say if a band is singing about bitches and hos, we won’t be discussing that band’s folk bona fides. If I hear someone refer to his auntie riding a bike to outer space, I better hear a backward guitar. Hyphenating your rock does come up with new and interesting music and should be celebrated, but if you agree to play chess, you can’t use your rook to leap-frog over my pieces and say “king me.”

  10. I appreciate this in-depth discussion, which I haven’t had enough time to participate in.

    One question/issue: I see the concept of psychedelic music as an aesthetic that primarily arises out of the affects of marijuana and LSD. Where do we place, for instance, the bands whose druggy aesthetic is more based in heroin? For instance, I think that accounts for at least some of the differences that characterized VU and, later, Spiritualized–the aesthetic of heroin is a drone-like, inward-looking spiritualism, or sometimes an utter abandonment of the things of this world. And of course there are other heroin bands who don’t have much of a recognizably druggy aesthetic at all–the New York Dolls, say, although Johnny Thunders has one solo acoustic record (is it called Hurt Me, I can’t remember) which is definitely all heroin aesthetic.

    One thing we perhaps haven’t considered in depth here–things like trip hop and other beat based “psychedelia” that comes out of ecstasy and whatever other new drugs came along by the time I was too old to care. What are the druggy aesthetics created by those kinds of drugs?

    The marijuana/LSD nexus is, I would argue, one that is also defined by a historical moment–it was about taking those drugs AT THAT TIME. That moment can’t reoccur just by recreating or advancing a sound. Indeed that’s all you can do: recreate, or advance. You can’t “do it like it was” again, because it was done like that, then.

  11. I want to add another quick point here: “following the rules” can only result in derivative, second rate music. Period. The way to make first rate music is by absorbing some of the key things that have come before you (whatever you take those to be), and adding to/changing/ disrupting them to fit the circumstances of YOUR present.

  12. sammymaudlin

    This is all so excellent. People are brushing up against the point I was trying to make and doing a much better job. My thoughts have changed a bit since though and I think that trying to define this genre is a bit of a rabbit hole. However, I think there is more than one valid definition. I’ll borrow from general slocum/BigSteve/saturnismine for the first-

    “Toy” aka “Bag of Tricks” aka “Ossified Convention”- This is the mainstream view that anything with a backwards guitar falls into.

    The next is a broader more high-minded definition that I’ll borrow from general slocum/Mr. Moderator-

    “The Box” aka “Mind Expansion Regardless of Drugs”- Any music that opens the mind of the listener. I dug this at first but am starting to think it is a bit of a cop out. However, I really want to believe it but it just doesn’t seem to serve clarification.

    The last is the one I was trying to get to and I’ll borrow from andyr-

    “Sounds Good When You’re Tripping” aka “Trippy Vibe”- Everyone’s heavy drug experience is different but there are some commonalities. These are what are difficult to describe. But there are certainly songs which revive these sensations to a degree. Dear Prudence being especially powerful for me. And the underbelly of Got To does it for me also, though apparently I share this commonality only with Sir Paul. (Yes I know the lyrics are obvious and the horns annoying but underneath that is a trippy vibe.)

    This is not to say that if you listen and enjoy something while tripping that it is instantly Psych. I listened to The Rhythm Devils once and enjoyed it but it didn’t then and doesn’t now evoke a trippy feeling.

    This last definition then leads to the larger point that I was trying to make and both Mr. Moderator and saturnismine touched on it with references to early Dinosaur Jr. and Meat Puppets. DJs “Bug” and Meat Puppets “Up on the Sun” and “Meat Puppets II” and “English Settlement” and “Second Edition”…. All evoke a heavy trippy vibe for me. That is not to say that they might not fall into the other categories and I realize that the fewer “bag of tricks” it has the more debatable it will be.

    So I think all definitions here have validity but it becomes a rabbit hole as everyone’s trip experience varies. Certainly there must be some common ground though-

    She Said, See Emily… both fall into all of the above categories. Yes?

    To complicate the issue is the “AT THAT TIME” comment from mwall which speaks to an earlier post of mine “Can You Still Love a Band Out of Time?”. The argument that Psychedelic music was of the time and anything since is just imitation. Music as a movement trapped in time.

    I personally have come to reject this argument based on my favoritism to the “Trippy Vibe” argument but definitely understand the POV which I think applies more to Punk than Psych… but…

    OK, I’m coming down now and need to be by myself for awhile.

  13. sammymaudlin

    Also- thanks for the Silver Sunshine tip. Sounded very “toy” but I really enjoyed playing with it and am going to download the album from eMusic.

  14. Feel free to delete this Mr. Mod. But I came across this link to a short film (with soundtrack) that to me fits the “psyche” description and thought I’d share:

    http://guilherme.tv/tyger/

  15. Mr. Moderator

    This looks HEAVY, Townsman Mrclean. I see no reason to delete it! Thanks.

  16. I want to add another quick point here: “following the rules” can only result in derivative, second rate music. Period. The way to make first rate music is by absorbing some of the key things that have come before you (whatever you take those to be), and adding to/changing/ disrupting them to fit the circumstances of YOUR present.

    I don’t buy that at all. Was every Pub rock band after the first one second rate? Every garage band after the first one unworthy? Would a Bob Seger fan argue that while they like him, he ever blazed new musical ground? Genres have specific forms, that’s why they are genres. I won’t accept the argument that an artist is adding/changing/disrupting by bringing their own sensibility to the form. How can any artist ever bring anything but that to a song??? Doesn’t mean it’s new or an absorption of the past, just that it is that artist’s use of the form.

    Man, haikus have really gone down hill after that first one. I’ve never heard a Knock, Knock joke as funny as the very first one written.

  17. saturnismine

    sammy, chicken,

    just checking in for a minute.

    perhaps looking at it this way would help:

    r & b, in some form or another, has been absorbing new ideas for, what 50 years now? so has country. metal, rap, have become revitalized many times over.

    but it seems that psyche belongs to the dogmatic…the narrow. and if a dinosaur jr. comes along it’s only a few who see them as a psyche band, while the majority define them as “indie” or “noise rock”.

    it seems we’ve got a chicken (pardon the pun) and egg problem on our hands.

    is the form something into which an artist must fit? or does the artist create, expand, redefine, or stagnate the form? of course, it’s both.

    chicken, i don’t think i see haikus and a style of music as analogous.

    but the pop song format is perhaps analogous to haiku. is that format a stylistic choice? some would argue it is.

    that is you can’t you know….but it’s alright…that is it’s not too bad…

    hmmmm

  18. I don’t buy that at all. Was every Pub rock band after the first one second rate?

    No, but the good ones didn’t simply imitate the others. They added something that the others didn’t have, and they brought something real from their experience to it.

    it seems we’ve got a chicken (pardon the pun) and egg problem on our hands.

    Yes, absolutely.

    is the form something into which an artist must fit? or does the artist create, expand, redefine, or stagnate the form? of course, it’s both.

    Well, part one here I’d say is close for me, but not quite. The artist must fit the form to the work, not the work to the form. Do it the first way, and you make the form breathe something new. Do it the other way, and you’re using a paint-by-numbers kit. But in any case on this point we’re splitting hairs. I don’t deny that you pick up things from what came before. But it’s what you do that’s new with it that counts–for better or worse.

    I won’t accept the argument that an artist is adding/changing/disrupting by bringing their own sensibility to the form. How can any artist ever bring anything but that to a song???

    It’s true that every AC/DC cover band, for instance, brings their own unique twist to AC/DC tunes. Even if they want to sound exactly like AC/DC, they can’t. But isn’t the only way to play a really good cover tune to not sound like the band who played it, but to make the song sound like YOUR song?

    Man, haikus have really gone down hill after that first one.

    You’re joking, but actually what you’re saying is more or less true. Haikus are really quite dead as a form of modern writing, except in rare instances–and those instances are when somebody does something new with them. Some of the very few important haikus of the 20th century were written by Japanese-Americans interred in a WWII California prison camp who wrote a linked haiku (a communal form in which one person after another takes a turn) describing the very particular details of life in that camp. A friend of mine published an excellent book called “Huge Haiku,” in which each poem had 17 lines and each line had 17 syllables–in other words, each line of each poem was a haiku. The book had 17 sections of 17 poems, for a total of 289 pieces. Otherwise, haiku is pretty much just satire now, something done seriously only by a few guys with grey beards in Marin County. Japanese poets almost all left the haiku behind a long time ago. Also, if you study the 800-year development of the haiku, you can see how massively it changed over time, not only in terms of subject matter, but also in terms of the variety of different kind of linked haiku forms that the Japanese developed. They discovered, early on, that the form was incredibly limiting, and were constantly trying to arrange new ways to test its limits.

    But I know what I’m saying here is shocking. It’s like saying that basketball wasn’t the same game in the 50s that it is now, even though you’ve still got to shoot the ball through the net. But I guarantee you that if you play it like they played it in the 50s, you’re gonna get whupped. Not only that, but turns out many of the “rules” are different too. All these games keep changing their rules!

  19. but it seems that psyche belongs to the dogmatic…the narrow. and if a dinosaur jr. comes along it’s only a few who see them as a psyche band, while the majority define them as “indie” or “noise rock”.

    Saturn, can you tell me who does or doesn’t think that trip hop is a form of psychedelic music? I’m asking quite seriously, because I know you know more about this than I do.

  20. saturnismine

    hmmm…i was wondering when we’d visit bristol.

    and to tell you the truth, i can’t answer authoritatively…

    educated guess:

    my students don’t think of trip hop much at all, let alone psyche.

    but the closer we get to the 30 yr. old, the likelier we are to encounter people who make the association.

    however, even they wouldn’t consider trip hop a form of pyshce, but a form that contains elements of other music that are much more strongly pronounced with psychedellic overtones.

    others should weigh in. great 48?

  21. BigSteve

    It’s true that the heyday of trip-hop is now about ten years ago, but I still contend that today’s (and tomorrow’s) psychedelic music is electronic.

    It occurs to me that psych rock being stuck in a rut is kind of like the problem with psychedelics and drugs in general. They’re supposed to open the doors of you mind, and they seem to do that when you start taking them. But then if you keep taking them it seems like you’re just opening the same door over and over again. You never really break on through to the other side. Enlightenment is temporary, at least in pill form. So we shouldn’t be surprised that the genre of psychedelic rock never really gets anywhere. Once you’ve heard a backwards guitar a few times it doesn’t really expand your consciousness any more than it did the first or second time.

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