The Lacking Permanence

When your arrangements are razor-sharp, your moods mercurial and psychedelic, and your melodies constantly off-kilter, you’re probably a Dutch band like Certain Animals.

Something’s in the water Down Under; there’s a veritable rainbow of guitar-forward fuzziness emanating from the land, and Bananagun is the kind that has a loose-limbed ability to pivot from genuine ‘60s jingleisms into full-out afrobeat.

If I could use synesthesia to describe Woods’ music, I would say it sounds like sparkling pastel day-go colors.

There’s no detail too small or scar too deep for Eels to pick up and examine in a wry musical light.

Dutch indie rock psychedelic bands often stand out from their UK or US counterparts because they are just too good at the tropes. It’s like they took the test and got 110%, and there wasn’t even extra credit.

Bootsy lays out the not-so-secret ingredient in funk right there in the title, and then gives you a giant plate and puts you at the head of the line of this 70-minute buffet of lose-you-inhibitions-and-dig-in variations on the recipe.

I haven’t seen the word skronk bandied about lately, it feels good to bring it out again. The Free Radicals are rhythmic, abrasive, definitely political, but most of all extra funky and pure of heart.

The journey to the island had been placid, cutting through the postcard-blue waters on the kite hydrofoil like an experienced tailor shearing fine cloth for a new suit. Things were a bit more complicated now that they were at the Heraklion Archaeological Museum. The horologist consulted the mission notes, which simply stated “remove all anachronistic displays.” The historian, fearing seasickness, had taken a pill and was now having a comically adverse reaction that rendered them useless for these judgements. A security guard eyed them warily, but perhaps they could turn the situation to their advantage by playing up the effects as excessive inebriation.

If this band were actual woods, they would be filled with fog swirling in sunlight, sparkling yet tenebrous, a distant falsetto clearly audible inside your ear as the leaves are chiming in the light.

They hit hard and they hit fast, with half of the songs here clocking in at two minutes or less, but they also hit sweet, with layers of boy-girl harmonies and drizzles of horn section.