EVERY GENRE PROJECT - July 16 - Neo-Psychedelia

Genre of the Day - Neo-Psychedelia

Album of the Day - Long Season by Fishmans (1996)

July 16, 2024

How do you keep psychedelia going after the era of psychedelic drugs proponents’ predicting their transformation of the western world decidedly ended? Sure, something of a psychedelic revolution has been trickling back in, though considerably corporatized and under strict legal boundaries. As a society we have not approached the same levels of interest and panic around psychedelics as during the 1960s’ counterculture movements and we probably never will because they simply lack the novelty of those times. In the late ‘70s, a reported 10% of senior-year American high schoolers had tried psychedelics—that number has dropped to 6% now. Our current musical stars seemingly don’t have the gall to take LSD a thousand times as John Lennon supposedly did.

Nevertheless, music inspired by psychedelic substances’ and their place in era-defining music has remained enchanting and well-remembered for its creativity and for pushing the sonic envelope. Devotees have kept the trip going via music. Neo-psychedlia emerged after the ashes of the ‘70s and the decade’s pin in hippie ideals, as dreamy musical textures and ideals began to recirculate in scenes like the Paisley Underground in contrast to harder punk styles in the ‘80s. Though neo-psychedelia has never coalesced into a cohesive scene, a variety of acts since have played on the swirling melodies, textural experimentations, and otherworldly sonic envelopes of the biggest psychedelic touchstones like Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, and the Grateful Dead. 

As musical technology has progressed, artists’ abilities to create mind-bending sounds and reverb-drenched ambiences via increasingly advanced synths and production effects have increased. The international emergence of genres like dub, reggae, and shoegaze have also offered new sonic directions to neo-psychedelia’s palette, particularly evidenced on today’s album. 

Today’s album reminds me of the magic and strangeness of RateYourMusic, the site I use as a base of genre categorization and album rankings. As I began this column, I was discovering the ins and outs of the platform and many of my little anecdotes were centered around my experience; as I’ve progressed, I’ve dived more into the genres and albums themselves rather than meta-observations about RYM. Though Fishmans received some radio play in their native Japan, as a band working in the niche of Japanese reggae and neo-psychedelia they didn’t ascend to a station of worldwide popularity comparable to other acts dabbling in neo-psychedelia like The Flaming Lips. Sites like RYM propelled this album’s rise to music nerd cult fame in the mid-2010s; it’s now the 80th most-rated album on the site. Though streaming services are often credited for revolutionizing music consumption as a more word-of-mouth endeavor and platforms like TikTok facilitate the return of dormant catalog songs to renewed fame, RYM deserves equal credit for helping connect legions of listeners to hidden gems.

Today’s album is listed at just one track, though it’s actually divided into five tracks. In an aptly psychedelic fashion, there are no clean breaks between songs, and transitions are announced in beguiling manners from the lead singer’s intense vocals dissolving into ambient, watery drips around the twelfth minute to anxious violins introducing the final suite. Psychedelia’s frequent flirtations with Indian music appear in the form of tabla drumming, and the instrumentation is as wide and expansive as the world of a dream from swirling arpeggiated synths and frenetic chimes to romantic accordion and impassioned drumming. There’s perhaps precious little for me to say that hasn’t at some point been pinpointed by the 305 reviews of this album by my fellow RYM warriors; if you can’t beat ‘em, join them in an entrancing, lush, never-predictable musical adventure.