I’ve been on a Australian psychedelic kick recently. Tame Impala is the most popular band in this genre, but there are enough of them to warrant their own wiki page. I’ve mostly been listening to this song The Weather by Pond on repeat.
This song in particular is probably about climate change. But it’s about it in a hard to parse way. The lyrics are ghostly and hard to understand. The video itself cuts between clips from fighting what looks like Australian forest/bush fires, and beautiful women from 20th century ads and movies.
The melody combined with the music video exists in this latent space of eery vibes, and captures an ethereal tension between luxury and existential risk, without being moralizing. Honestly, it’s a great song, and worth a listen if you’re the type of person who likes any type of psychedelic music.
Ghosts are only negative space
Ancestors, no blood
No place, no mark
Just voices, in the dark
I had also been listening to this song Yours by King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard on repeat this past Summer, leading up into the birth of my daughter. It’s difficult to make out the lyrics, but the sense of the song felt of renewal. After listening to it on a lot of runs, and psyching myself up to be a dad, I read this following interview, where he talked about how the album was also written during and reflecting upon him being a new dad.
I take this as further evidence that psychedelic music is able to transmit messages through its music, without ever being direct. It’s mystical to me how distorted guitar can tell the story of being a new dad. A strange mixture of optimism and apprehension.