Edmonton psych-rocker releases new LP
Psychedelic music holds a place dear to me and, surely, others whose musical tastes came into their own in high school and onward. Who can forget the first time listening to the Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request, or Can’s Tago Mago, or Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow? It’s a genre that can expand musical horizons and consolidate one’s idea of self through its power and immersive soundscapes. It also, admittedly, runs the risk of running stale – namely, where’s the personality in psychedelic music’s sometimes self-indulgent tendencies? Lucky for us, an album like Faith Healer’s (Jessica Jalbert) Cosmic Troubles, injects a much-needed confessional and personal edge in its songwriting and textural approaches.
Edmonton-based Faith Healer (Jessica Jalpert) offers introspective, quietly subversive psychedelic rock in her new LP, Cosmic Troubles.
Cosmic Troubles, the newest LP by the Edmonton-based songwriter, cheekily opens up with a track called “Acid.” With its chipper, wah-laden guitars, gentle, relaxed vocals, and analog synth overlays, one knows, almost immediately, what to expect from the rest of the album. It’s an accurate, almost self-aware materializing of psychedelic anxieties, both musically and lyrically (“The last time that we passed it/ I just hated everyone”). Usually in psychedelic rock, a bad trip is often compositionally assumed, but Jalbert puts it at the front and centre of the song, with a blunt and confessional narrative force.
“Canonized,” the album’s third track, shifts into slightly darker and heavier territory, with fuzzier, more aggressive guitar-scapes, and a chunky bass at the forefront, interrupting the gentle lulls of the last two tracks. The contained, jokingly self-aware storytelling of “Acid” is continued with “Fools Rush In,” with one of its lyrical hooks reading, “I’m so stupid I will probably forget.” Throughout the album, Jalbert maintains a fine line between thematic ennui and life affirming joy, and this track is perhaps the apex of this tension. There is a rare honesty (for psychedelic music, anyway) pervading the LP’s runtime, and it is punctuated by Faith Healer just having flat-out ton of fun with the music she makes.
“Angel Eyes” follows the prior track with a fingerpicked, tremolo-heavy guitar riff, suggesting a style akin to Friends of Dean Martinez, or any number of roots-informed rock. The track offers a marked shift from what we’ve heard thus far. Its 3/4 waltz feel and acoustic-textured soundscape invites a gentle shift in style that is not overly radical, but is welcomed as to avoid becoming stale. Psych-rock has a tendency to do this – and it seems Jalbert and co. mess around with the form just enough to make it a logical turning point for the record.
“Infinite Return” marks an even more inspired shift in style. A pulsing bass riff reminiscent of Destroyer’s Kaputt, off-kilter guitar punctuations, and warm synthesizer flourishes complicate, for the better, a so-far straight-forward record. It still maintains its core, trippy nature, though – the perceived synth-pop flourishes merely support the song’s strength and offer an extension of the expected norms of psychedelic guitar music.
“Universe” is perhaps the most traditional-sounding track on the record. Its scratchy, Guess Who-flavoured guitars, and vocal harmonies that recall the unassuming sweetness of Yo La Tengo’s Georgia Hubley, make this track the one most clearly rooted in psych-rock historicisms.
Overall, Cosmic Troubles maintains a careful and welcomed balancing of traditional and forward-looking compositions – a balance in which psych-rock, and guitar music in general, seems to be headed in contemporary rock culture. The 60s and 70s influences are merely a footnote to an otherwise freshly crafted song sequence, and the weak tracks are few and far between.