The Lazy Eyes

There’s something going on in the land Down Under. A revolution of the psych-optic, an explosion of the esoteric, journeys far and wide into the canyons of the mind’s third-eye.

Tame Impala’s discodified-dreamtripping and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s relentlessness fuzz-buzz initially alerted the wider world to the country’s cultural cataclysm. However, throw in Erasers’ lo-fi technotronica, Swazi Gold’s languorous hazy-envisioned observations, Mildlife’s horizontal jazz-pizzazz and Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever’s jangle Go-Between pop and it all amounts to a bevel-headed brew.

Now to throw further choir onto the tunable fire come Sydney quartet The Lazy Eyes with debut album ‘Songbook’. Made up of Harvey Geraghty, Itay Shachar, Noah Martin and Leon Karagic it’s a cornucopia of mid-60s Beatlebeat bliss-out (hum)anthems (Starting Over’; ‘Imaginary Girl; ‘Nobody taught me’ has a subtle nod to ‘She Said, She Said’), early 70s space-rock and stoner-stroll (‘The Seaside’; ‘Hippo’) and listen earwig-outs (‘The Island’; ‘Tangerine’).

Opener ‘Intro’ pronounces the oncoming (sc)ramble-jam, scene-setting, go-getting, a sonic thud-letting that segues into ‘The Seaside’. A technicolour tour de force, both dippy and trippy, Gergahty’s distant, hesitant, innocent babe-in-the-wood vocals moodily interrupted by a noodling interlude that gathers apace before returning to far-gazing, hazy shades of dazey splinters.

‘Tangerine’ and ‘Where is my brain???’ are passively-aggressive progressive rock. One part slick motorik, two parts thick metal. All parts power. ‘Starting Over’ applies The Olivia Tremor Control’s coordinates of mid-period Beatles direction-changing, evolving, moving forwards towards, effortlessly expressing profound themes and unleashing bound dreams in fantastical lyricism.

Standouts are ‘Fuzz Jam’ is an onomatopoeic odyssey that fits like a glove with the current redrawing of the psychedelic tableaux: a lolloping bass leads the head (dis)charge, the accompanying noise hot on the trail.

‘Trance’ has the epic bombast of Jeff Wayne’s rock-opera take on H.G. Wells's ‘The War of the Worlds’.

This is a group more than the some (sic) of its parts. Derivative, yes, indicative, most definitely. Summer has its new soundtrack.