Psychedelic Horseshit – Laced
When Matt Horseshit and Ryan Jewell of Psychedelic Horseshit labelled their abrasive-yet-melodic music ‘shitgaze’, they did themselves quite the disservice. While their tongue-in-cheek neologism indicates both compromised recording quality (‘shitness’, if you will) and the immersive dreaminess of shoegaze, it fails to capture the multifaceted dayglo wonder that is Laced, which is great, then horrible, then great again (and, actually, the horrible bits are pretty great too). Thus a new genre is born: tropical-drone treble-sore calypso-noise mystic-pop squishy-garage punk-gaze.
OK, so the name needs work but its catalysing album is fully formed and rather awesome. I Hate The Beach’s insouciant eight-minute ramble and the mesmerising title track stand-out from the dense haze, while Another Side suggests, fittingly, another side to the Ohio duo, its conventional structure and harmonica middle-eight emphasising that, for all their egregiously tuneless vocals (not to mention their family-unfriendly name), Psychedelic Horseshit are never far from pop’s shores. [Chris Buckle]