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Neo-psychedelia is a genre of psychedelic music that draws inspiration from the sounds of 1960s psychedelia, either emulating the sounds of that era[1] or applying its spirit to new styles.[5] It has occasionally seen mainstream pop success but is typically explored within alternative music and underground scenes.[6]
| Neo-psychedelia | |
|---|---|
| Other names | Acid punk |
| Stylistic origins | |
| Cultural origins | Late 1970s, United States and United Kingdom |
| Derivative forms | |
| Subgenres | |
| Local scenes | |
| Other topics | |
Neo-psychedelia first developed in the late-1970s as an outgrowth of the British post-punk scene, where it was also known as acid punk. Prince explored neo-psychedelic elements in his successful mid-1980s music. A neo-psychedelic wave of British alternative rock in the 1980s spawned the subgenres of dream pop and shoegazing.[4] Neo-psychedelia may also include forays into psychedelic pop, jangly guitar rock, heavily distorted free-form jams, or recording experiments.[1]
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Neo-psychedelic acts consistently borrow a variety of elements from 1960s psychedelic music. Some emulated the psychedelic pop and psychedelic rock of bands such as the Beatles and early Pink Floyd, while others adopted Byrds-influenced guitar rock, or distorted free-form jams and sonic experimentalism of the 1960s, with bands like the Red Krayola being a reference point for the latter.[1] Some neo-psychedelic bands were explicitly focused on drug use and experiences,[1] and like the acid house movement of the same era, evoked transitory, ephemeral, and trance-like experiences.[7]
Several bands have used neo-psychedelic elements, or perform neo-psychedelia, to accompany surreal or political lyrics.[1] In the view of author Erik Morse, "the sounds of American neo-psychedelia emphasized the cryptic margins of avant-rock, incorporating evanescent textures over an immutable bassline, producing a 'heavy' metallic ambience, contra-distinct to the sing-song filigree of British psychedelia".[8]
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1970s–1980s: Post-punk
Neo-psychedelia, or as they're calling it in England, acid punk ... is one of the two strongest trends in new wave music ... While this may seem a paradox, since punk was largely a backlash against '60s drug culture, in fact acid rock in the '60s was originally a spinoff of that decade's "punk rock" scene.
Psychedelic rock declined towards the end of the 1960s as bands broke up or moved into new forms of music, including heavy metal music and progressive rock.[9] Like the psychedelic developments of the late 1960s, punk rock and new wave in the 1970s challenged the rock music establishment.[10] At the time, "new wave" was a term used interchangeably with the nascent punk rock explosion.[11] In 1978, journalist Greg Shaw categorized a subset of new wave music as "neo-psychedelia", citing Devo, "to an extent ... [its] first major indication ... [they are] the new darling of the new wave press and opinion-makers, yet nothing about it is remotely 'punk'".[2] Shaw wrote that in England, neo-psychedelia was known as "acid punk", noting that the "self-advertised 'psychedelic punk' band, the Soft Boys, [was] being hotly pursued by several major labels."[2] The San Francisco band Chrome labelled themselves "acid punk" during this era.[12] According to Chrome member Helios Creed, music journalists at the time considered about ten bands – including Chrome, Devo, and Pere Ubu – to be acid punk groups: "They didn't want to call it psychedelia, it was New Wave psychedelia".[13]
By 1978–79, new wave was considered independent from punk and post-punk (the latter was initially known as "new musick").[14][nb 1] Author Clinton Heylin marks the second half of year 1977 and the first half of year 1978 as the "true starting-point for English post-punk".[16][nb 2] Some of the indie music scene's bands, including the Soft Boys, the Teardrop Explodes, Wah!, and Echo & the Bunnymen, became major figures of neo-psychedelia.[1][nb 3] In the early 1980s, Siouxsie and the Banshees crafted a "exotic neo-psychedelic pop" with the arrival of guitarist John McGeoch.[19] The early 1980s Paisley Underground movement followed neo-psychedelia.[1] Originating in Los Angeles, the movement saw a number of young bands who were influenced by the psychedelia of the late 1960s and all took different elements of it, and the term "Paisley Underground" was later expanded to include others from outside the city who explored the same songwriting techniques and influences.[20]
1980s–present
In the 1980s and 1990s there were occasional mainstream acts that dabbled in neo-psychedelia, including Prince's mid-1980s work and some of Lenny Kravitz's 1990s output, but neo-psychedelia has mainly been the domain of alternative and indie rock bands.[1] The late 1980s would see the birth of shoegazing, which, among other influences, took inspiration from 1960s psychedelia.[21] Reynolds referred to this movement as "a rash of blurry, neo-psychedelic bands" in a 1992 article in The Observer.[21]
AllMusic states: "Aside from the early-'80s Paisley Underground movement and the Elephant 6 collective of the late 1990s, most subsequent neo-psychedelia came from isolated eccentrics and revivalists, not cohesive scenes." They go on to cite what they consider some of the more prominent artists: the Church, Nick Saloman's Bevis Frond, Spacemen 3, Robyn Hitchcock, Mercury Rev, the Flaming Lips, and Super Furry Animals.[1] According to Treblezine's Jeff Telrich: "Primal Scream made [neo-psychedelia] dancefloor ready. The Flaming Lips and Spiritualized took it to orchestral realms. And Animal Collective—well, they kinda did their own thing."[5]
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- Contemporary writers like Jon Savage saw the experimental and radical musical deconstructions of groups like Devo, Throbbing Gristle, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Slits, and Wire as "post-punk" maneuvers.[15]
- He says that the arrival of guitarist John McKay in Siouxsie and the Banshees in 1977, Magazine's album Real Life (1978), and Wire's new musical direction as factors in this starting point.[16] Journalist David Stubbs wrote that Siouxsie and the Banshees' music in 1982 had got "neo-psychedelic flourishes" with "pan-like flutes" and "treated loops".[17]
- Reynolds surmised that Echo & the Bunnymen's "tuneful" music could be likened to "two other leading postpunk groups to come from Liverpool during this period: Wah! Heat, with their ringing chords and endless crescendos, and the neopsychedelic outfit Teardrop Explodes, whose singer, Julian Cope, described the band's songs as 'cries of joy.'"[18] He also notes that Echo & the Bunnymen were heralded as the harbingers of "new psychedelia", he writes, "despite the fact that in those days they never ingested anything more deranging than pints of ale".[18] The band's manager, Bill Drummond, said: "All that postpunk vanguard stuff, we'd just think that was completely stupid."[18]
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