Sons of Hippies

The band are called Sons of Hippies (although one of them is a daughter) and if you were to try and imagine what the children of hippies would sound like this is pretty well spot on – brilliant album of psych-acid indie rock.

The band is: Katherine Kelly (guitar, sitar, vox), Jonas Canales (Drums, percussion, Korg, vox), David Daly (Bass, vox). They hail from Tennessee but their sound is pure West Coast although as modern as tomorrow.

One look at the song titles will tell you that this isn’t r&b or pop – ‘Forward’, ‘Dark Daisies’, ‘Spaceship Ride’ or the wonderful ‘Animal Battle’ and musically they are powerful and rocky with proggy tendencies and acid/psych edginess. The harmonies are sumptuous but in the foreground is Katherine’s vocal which has a wonderful touch of sixties madness about it.

There are definite touches of Traffic here as well as Hawkwind and even Krautrock stalwarts like Amon Duul but they create a sound that is utterly modern. Very rare to hear a mellotron sound in a trance number but it works brilliantly on ‘Man or Moon’. ‘Minute x Minute’ is powerful and hard-edged with a screech from Ms Kelly that could etch glass but it stomps along like Iron Maiden on heat and the end result is uplifting and monstrous. They follow up with the sitar led ‘Animal Battle’ and all the tracks are so different that you never settle to just hearing the album – you have to listen.

The band clearly have talent and no shortage of writing skills. They won’t appeal to all but if you are of a psych or Prog mind you should lap this up.

I can’t wait for them to come and play here – it should be a wild ride!