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Album Details

• Artist: Soft Canyon
• Album: Broken Spirit, I Will Mend Your Wings
• Label: Alien8
• Year of Release: 2003
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: jparker on 2003-07-30

What makes rock psychedelic? It's not acid-drenched feedback, phasing, string accompaniments, or even backwards tracks with satanic messages. Because you've heard a lot of positively unpsychedelic, stultifying music with any or all of these so-called hallmarks. What binds The Beatles to XTC, The Weeds to The White Stripes, Captain Beefheart to The Flaming Lips, and The Pretty Things to Soft Canyon, is that sometimes subtle, yet always momentous uplift that embodies but one thing (and stay with me here, because I'll justify it later): the Out Of Body Experience. And before you think I'm on some lame new age kick, realize that these musical OOBEs include freakbeat's adrenal rush, psych-pop's euphoric tingle, Krautrock's hypnotic trance, and the full-blown synaesthesia of acid and prog. These musics exist to capture the autonomic, to make you lose control over your earthbound body (which is why the muddy depths of the blues are for me the antithesis of the psychedelic). And this is why Soft Canyon exists. From the opening strains of "For You", vocals stretch up, basslines descend, circular riffs draw you in. Tom-toms rumble and crescendo: everywhere, potential. Heavy things are placed on fragile stalks, ready to crash down around you. And it's glorious. The full-to-bursting "Hope's Great Divide" blows you right into the whirlpool of "Send Me Your Love". The innocence of "Kaleidoscope Mountain" tumbles headlong into the incense (and peppermints) of "With My Back To The Sun." In the 7-minute "We Threw Our Love Into The Universe", this band gets a chance to let the fuse out more slowly - and they have the chops to fully realize its extended jam, magnum opus leanings. Throughout this sincere, empassioned album, Broken Spirit shows that Soft Canyon, Montrealers and Tricky Woo alumni, know exactly what they're doing, striking just the right chord, skilfully avoiding both the maudlin and the pretentious. Call it acid or psych or prog or just plain rock, transcendence never goes out of fashion.

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