[ad_1]
Valerian Tea, the debut full-length from San Francisco’s Magic Fig, combines the gentler side of 1970s progressive rock with dashes of 1960s psychedelic folk and 1980s video game-style synths. It’s an intriguing combination that serves the band well. Vocalist Inna Showalter’s breathy, ethereal singing anchors the group. That allows guitarist Muzzy Moskowitz and keyboardist Jon Chaney to go off into more complicated passages here and there.
The album opens with “Flammarion”, which begins with a Moog-style synth arpeggio. When Showalter starts singing, the band back off to let her grab the focus, but eventually ramp back up. Chaney uses four or five distinct synth tones throughout the song, from organ to chirpy video game sounds. Moskowitz also shifts his guitar tone from cleaner to very distorted across the song’s nearly six minutes. It’s a credit to the group that they keep the central musical themes consistent enough for the song to feel like one coherent piece.
Magic Fig, it turns out, is very skilled at having an established sound while each of their songs sounds distinctly different. The easygoing “Walking Shoes” has a sunny, 1970s AM-radio feel, with layered backing vocals and a guitar solo that’s just distorted enough to capture the vibe perfectly. “At the Garden’s Gate”, on the other hand, has a more unsettled mood. It’s driven by sparse, chiming acoustic guitar arpeggios, and Showalter’s subdued, cooing vocals. The song also takes an unexpected musical turn in the bridge, getting darker and heavier and bringing some of those progressive rock aspects to the fore.
After these first three songs, Magic Fig takes a sharp turn with “Percolations”, an interstitial piece of shimmering, nearly static music that lasts less than a minute and leads into the title track, “Valerian Tea”. They also do this a couple of other times on the back half of the record. “Riders at Dawn” is just over 30 seconds long and sounds like the triumphant theme from an 1980s Nintendo game.
“Splinter”, on the other hand, is 30 seconds of synth washes that coalesce into the primary theme of the next song, “Goblin”. Each of these short bits showcases a different aspect of the band. While “Percolations” and “Splinter” mainly serve as introductions, it’s interesting that “Riders” was deemed good enough for the album but not worth expanding into a whole song.
“Valerian Tea” itself is a good showcase for Magic Fig’s style. It starts as a charming, poppy song, with a strong vocal melody echoed by the guitar. Bassist Matthew Ferrara and drummer Taylor Giffin provide an “oom-pa” waltz-style rhythm to propel the track along gently. Then, at the halfway point, they shift to a minor-key version of the central theme, foreboding and ominous. By the end of the song, though, the song has brightened back up while the drums and bass are driving at twice the speed of the opening.
The final three full tracks each provide different feelings. “Sensation Seeker” uses hymn-like sounds and melodies throughout, along with one of the record’s most blatantly psychedelic sections, and is capped off with a face-melting guitar solo. “Goblin” keeps interrupting its ever-growing progressive rock with quiet moments. Near the beginning, there’s a piano-driven section, and later on, there’s a glockenspiel interlude.
Closer “Sleep of Reason” drifts through sections that sound very Radiohead-inspired, while also incorporating many of their already established tricks. The track builds to a wailing psychedelic climax involving the guitar and keyboards, before quickly drifting away to finish out the record.
Magic Fig successfully combines styles from several eras into a unique sound that’s very engaging. If there’s one issue, it’s that when the whole band is playing, Showalter’s breathy vocals occasionally get lost in the mix. These muddled vocals, however, also reinforce the idea that Valerian Tea is a concept album. By the group’s own account, it isn’t, but if the listener can’t quite decipher the lyrics, then maybe they’re all connected? Either way, this is an engrossing record and well worth a listen for fans of both progressive rock and psychedelic stuff.
[ad_2]
Chris Conaton
Source link