Back in Los Angeles, California, for the new album by Allah-Las, out today 09 September, 2016. Here in Italy, standing at the weather and as Jim Morrison and The Doors were used to say, summer’s almost gone, but the new album by these guys in a certain sense let shine a ray of light into these rainy days.
Oh yeah. If you guess that as their previous releases, also ‘Calico Review’ it’s going to be a ‘solar’ album and with references to bands like Beach Boys and the California scene of the sixties, you’re right.
The third album released by the band and the first for the Mexican Summer, it has been considered by many critics as the so-called consecration piece that finally could launch Allah-Las and propose them to a bigger audience.
To be honest, on one hand I agree with consideration. Of course the band still sounds garage and lo-fi, but in the complex the sonorities are less rough than in the past and the compositions are some way more traditional, bubblegum and poppy. It’s a product much more commercial than the previous two and that it is possibly inspired not only by their main point of reference, the Beach Boys, but also by The Velvet Underground of ‘Loaded’ (‘Place In the Sun). ‘Could Be You’ for example could possibly be a song written by the young Lou Reed. The same it is for the ballad ‘Famous Phone Figure’.
On the other hand the sound of the band definitely lost that egyptian and pyramid-shaped style that made so great and particular the eponymous album of the 2012 and ‘Worship the Sun’ (2014).
Emulating the best episodes of sixties psychedelia as their actual collagues like Jacco Gardner (‘Strange Heat’, ‘Autumn Dawn’) or inspiring themselves directly to masters like The Doors (‘Terra Ignota’) or possibly the early Pink Floyd (‘Warmed Kippers’), Allah-Las renew a long tradition in surf and pop psychedelia and I finally would like the fact this album it’s more accessible than the others as an opportunity. It’s psychedelic culture for the masses.
Vote: 6,5/10
You can also read this review at machchapuchchare
