Whatever is in the sugar cubes that Tim Presley’s ingesting, I’ll have it. There’s a lysergic nursery rhyme here – the haunting, hypnotic title track, which falls somewhere between Jason Pierce and Arthur Lee at their most lovely and sedate(d).
The nod to Syd Barrett, Fog City, ticks over with metronomic unease, and through the more conventional (as conventional as it gets) jangle of I Love You, he wears his psychedelic influences as easily as his usual mischievous musical collaborator Cate Le Bon. Here, fellow pop oddball H Hawkline pops up on Telephone.
Yet this is fuelled by a more introspective, more inward-looking direction than before. Presley sounds open and vulnerable. Neighborhood Light‘s tilted at a more proto-punk angle, with exposed nerves betrayed by the short stabs of guitar.
He’s totally wired, in short, and tied to the more esoteric side of sixties and seventies experimentalism. Lorelei is incredibly pretty, modern hazy psych which still manages to implode in dissonance, organ and flutes. It’s Alice through the sink hole, as opposed to the rabbit hole.
Forever Chained is a glorious piano-led maelstrom of lunacy. In the right frame of mind, Larry’s Hawk feels like a warm embrace from new-found festival freaks, swaying together in a welcome breeze.
Perhaps it’s simply the wrong time of year to release this album – this would possibly sit better in a July heatwave summer, when the sun both disorientates, and makes everything seem clearer. San Francisco, where this was recorded, has a hell of a lot to answer for.