joke's on you

 

In opposition to every other blogger without an opinion I refuse to dismiss this minor masterpiece of psych dream pop as simply an homage to The United States of America. While the influence the latter had on this album is audible, the discrepancy between the two is very significant: one is the ultimate example of where the term "psychedelic" is obligatorily but fairly inaccurately applied and the second is the total realization of the values the term has come to imply. In my understanding of it, psychedelia is, to an extent, the merging of aesthetic and experience. The connection the genre has with drugs is obviously integral and it is easy to go the route of saying "if it's not trippy, it's not psych". However, this approach presents several problems; not everyone finds the same things trippy when on certain drugs and not everyone does drugs (nor needs to, necessarily) to enjoy psychedelic or 'trippy' music. In fact, I argue that the litmus test works better with those not so fried as to just find any shitty jamming trippy. And Broadcast's Haha Sound passes with flying, swirling droplets of colour. What we find here is the perfect marriage of sonic texture and tonal content. At no one moment are you asked to sacrifice form to focus on content or vice-verse. As good friend and extraordinary artist/bouzouki-ist Peter Nevins put it, in so many words: Trish Keenan has a way of leading you with her haunting vocals and melodies, through even the most twisted, acid-drenched, fuzzed-out passages. She takes you on the long cut and sometimes leaves you lost in their depths. Knowledge of her untimely and cachet-free death adds a dimension of the disillusioning to these warm yet cold embraces. Free of the invasive orchestrations and other 60s pop-kitsch that mar artists like The U.S.A. pour moi, Haha showcases a band with a great grasp on what elements worked in the early days of psych updating them with ease and a blotter full of musical talent.

  

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