Psychic Wheels

“Teach me your anatomy, teach me about LSD, baby,” could translate as an R. Kelly come-on crooned to a stadium full of Deadheads.

Bellowed deadpan from the mouth of Psychic Wheels’ Spencer Morgan, the lyric has creepier, almost nightmarish implications. Such is the way punchy melancholy and combustible garage riffs are handled in tandem by the Psychic Wheels on their debut album Peripheral Drift.

On record, Morgan’s the prom date who shows up with a bouquet of dead roses and thinks a proper after-party is to walk hand-and-hand in the graveyard. He plays the hopelessly romantic protagonist, indulging the dark fantasies the lyrics suggest, all with a mouth full of watermelon Hubba Bubba. In person though, the Wheels are more Jekyll than Hyde, with Morgan and company treating the pioneering days of psychedelia with a surgeon’s deft hand. That’s certainly no slight, as zeroing in on that particular aesthetic – ’50s girl-groups, baroque pop, Cramps’ sleaze – has only made their songs blossom. And given a proper lab, in this case the studio at Musicol, they finally tapped into the “otherness” lurking inside.

“At Musicol, we were able to explore tones and textures to properly give each song its own character,” says Morgan of recording Peripheral Drift. “We wanted this record to represent the full spectrum of our sound, which has always included the extremes of punk noisiness, bubblegum pop, and general strangeness.”

That combination proves infectious on songs like “I Need A (Dream)” or “Rock and Roll Love.” Suddenly the reverb becomes disorienting, the guitar lines blurred, but the hooks start to dig deeper. It’s a long way from the band’s shambolic beginnings three years ago when Morgan’s visions dealt in the skeletal and undercooked. Now for every three-chord rant, there’s a fleshier, more colorful counter. “Crying Girls,” for instance, with its acoustic and choral refrain, plays up their prettier, somnambulant tendencies. Bigger dreams render bigger sounds, and it definitely shows that after a few minor line-up shifts and a laundry list of reputable shows under their belts, Psychic Wheels are now pretty much communicating with telepathy.

“The biggest transformation,” reflects Morgan on the Wheels’ time in the trenches, “has probably been live. We’ve been working hard to hone a really energetic but hypnotic live show that is gripping from start to finish.”

Though the release of Peripheral Drift is still a few months off, the band is eager for the world to hear the final results. So eager in fact, that Morgan has taken matters into his own hands and decided to start his own label, Superdreamer Records, to expedite the process. Superdreamer has also committed to albums by locals Red Feathers, Comrade Question, and Bummers.

That’s enough to have local listeners doing their own monster mash well into the new year. •

– Kevin J. Elliott - (614) Magazine