Bad news for all you work-from-home folks. The new Psychedelic Porn Crumpets album is going to bring your house crashing to the ground. Don’t worry about it. Lucky for you, it’s also going to serve as the badass soundtrack to your new life as a gallivanting cowboy roaming the land in search of brand new sensations. The two-sided goliath, dubbed SHYGA! The Sunlight Mound, brings fans a new lease on life in the form of luscious, towering riffs, anthemic vocal melodies dripping in static, and a palatable sonic energy.
Hardly a departure from their previous albums, High Visceral Pt. 1 & 2, followed by And Now for the Whatchamacallit, this latest body of work further contributes to the broader picture of Psychedelic Porn Crumpets as a sketchy amusement park that you’ve got all to yourself. Sure, you’ve got your brief downtime in the form of tracks like the 2017 tune “It’s Not Safe To Leave This House” (who could’ve predicted the relevancy of that one) and the new “More Glitter,” but what you’re clearly there is for that hectic, righteous adrenaline.
Building off of the band’s at times muffled, arcade game-like production, SHYGA! sees the incorporation of nostalgic, crushed 8-bit soundbites reminiscent of the 1980 Namco game “Rally X”, on tracks like “Sawtooth Monkfish,” “Hats off to the Green Bins,” and “Round The Corner.” This rough-around-the-edges approach on the production end serves as a fitting compliment to the group’s teeth-grinding, boot-stomping flavor of psychedelic rock.
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets do share similar sounds (and a homeland in Australia) with acts such as King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Tame Impala and its closely-related counterpart Pond. That being said, the group nonetheless has continued to pave a road of their own within this sphere, a road covered with glass shards from broken bottles, asphalt melting from the heat of a brutal Australian summer, leading to nowhere and everywhere. — DYLAN LONG