Search - Rain Parade :: Emergency 3rd Rail Power Trip/ Explosions In The Glass Palace

Psychedelic Bliss!!

ravcon | 05/10/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"If you're a fan of classic psychedelic rock, such as Sgt Pepper-era Beatles, early Pink Floyd, and the Byrds, you will LOVE this album. Every song bursts forth with great melodies and trippy instrumentation -- a wonderful listen from start to finish!"

Austere neo-psychedelia: introspective & restrained

John L Murphy | Los Angeles | 04/12/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I'm old enough to have remembered this hometown band and I had bought the LP and EP when they came out--so, how have two decades and more effected my reception now to Rain Parade's sounds? A caution for anyone expecting from the CD title(s) some acid-drenched freakout. This is decidedly a bit narcoleptic--it lacks the full-blown (or bloated) effects that so many original (circa 1966/7) inspirations and neo-psych contemporaries piled on top of their winsome tunes. RP's more austere. Sort of like The Three O'Clock if they were less exuberant or chipper--or twee? Not as raucous as Salvation Army, but you can hear in RP hints of the earlier punk-pop scene in the three vocalists' untutored but determined delivery of downbeat lyrics.



The first six songs on this CD reissue, that is, the first half of the E3rdRail LP, sound in retrospect much like Opal, except with male vocals rather than Kendra Smith's dreamier, sleepy style. These songs tend to move contemplatively, with nearly no obvious pandering to a more pop sensibility or a poser's easy donning of the outward style without the secret attitude that marks true psych. Rather than provide glaring flourishes, they retreat. They hold back rather than release tension.



While other listeners have heard more baroque influences in these grooves, I do not: as I found way back in its vinyl versions, RP creates more ambience by suggestion rather than action. The music's quiet, and made for introspection, as the band's name portends.



The liveliest cuts come on side 2, the next five songs, that is, side 2 of the LP. These sound much more like a band playing Sunset Strip such as Buffalo Springfield, or the politer side of the emerging psychedelic LA pioneers. Janglier, more effusive, with vocals mixed more to the front, and plaintive if convincingly earnest musical and singing projection that appeals more to the pop side of this style. These are more accessible cuts than side one--a surprise that flips the usual sequencing of albums.



The final songs come from their later EP. This isn't the noisefest that the title seems to promise. The songs are more fleshed out with noticeably but still subtly more emphatic (although still restrained by comparison with many neo-psych bands) production and arranging. These last songs occupy a middle ground between the two styles on the LP, with a sound that settles down and blends the gloomier dirges with the peppier-poppish song-styles.



Fans of Opal and perhaps the later Mazzy Star might like this album, as it shows David Roback and company--many of whom backed the later bands (see also the Rainy Day side project, the RP's odds-and-ends Demolition LP, and the non-D. Roback remnants of the band shifting into Viva Saturn) preparing for their later reliance on narcoleptic female faux-folkish singers, Kendra Smith, in fact, is credited on one song here. This is the sound that sparked a decade or so of activity along the same doleful paths into the center of the haunted mind.



What RP has in common with later 80s/early 90s LA neo-psych is their concentration, and rather somber, self-important stance (which comes with any D. Roback-helmed record it seems). The band favors an often langorous, more swirling sound that deepens these musicians' trek into the mind more than the body, to mirror the interior, less obvious, effect of the SoCal pop-turns-psych 1966-7 sounds that, somehow, endured to re-surface with this band, beginning in the aftermath of punk and the accompanying stirrings of renewed countryish-indie-rock among those too young for hippies but old enough for early punk...and then branching out into the past 60s sounds to make them fresh again, around 15-20 years later after the groovy Sunset Strip era in LA."