Shyga! The Sunlight Mound. Psychedelic Porn Crumpets

The introduction to this Australian band with the rather circumspect name on this blog was taken care of by two singles that preceded Shyga! The mix of rock, tough pop and psychedelia was pleasing enough to look forward to the album. These expectations were not disappointed.

Psychedelic Porn Crumpets is a five piece band from Perth in Western Australia. It may be the first music from a band from Perth I am ever hearing. In the last decade they all come from Melbourne it seems. The band formed in 2014 and is on its fourth album already. It's my first, so I can't compare.

That said, I notice that Shyga! is a full and mature sounding album. This band fully knows what it wants and manages to get that intention over in full confidence. The result is an album tying together decades of music. The Beatles of the love and peace year 1967 are there, but so is loud, direct rock. Because of that mix, a truckload of bands that were active in the new-psychedelia revival of the mid 10s come to mind. The Dutch band PAUW would have been able to get away with a song like 'Pukebox' for certain. If there is a difference, it is that PPC is quite often far more direct in its songs. The psychedelia is not a goal in itself but an adornment of the music. As I wrote at some point during the psychic revival, some bands decade played psychedelia on a peppermint to get high and sounded like it. As if psychedelia is a calculated studio project. PPC is more of the real thing because of the enormously loud rock component in its music. Just listen to the fireworks in 'Mundungus' to know what I mean. This song is musical fireworks. Large riffs, tough breaks and tons of speed.

Promo photo

It is not difficult to spot that other influence on the album: Kings of Leon. The third one is hidden away a little deeper, Nirvana's 'Nevermind'. The power in combination with ironclad melodies is there but hidden away in a deeper layer because of the 1967 output of The Beatles, creating a pop feel that is present in most songs or better, more obvious than in the songs on 'Nevermind'. Let's not lose sight of the fact that Kurt Cobain was able to write a perfect pop song; no matter how disguised. To my ears there's a fourth band deserving a mention and that is Kula Shaker. PPC does not lay on the Indian influences as thickly on its music, the pop element in its psychedelia and the singing certainly reminds me of, especially, Kula Shaker's first album 'K'.

On Shyga! these influences come together in a way that can only be called infectuous. Psychedelic Porn Crumpets blends all the pop, riffs, psychedelic influences into a form of rock music that is allowed to go off in many directions as long as pop wins in the end. Shyga! The Sunlight Mound may even be better than I had expected it to be on the basis of the two singles.

Wo.

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