Tidings

Forget the current bands kicking around the indie scene that have been tagged "psychedelic." Sure, they're trippy and tasty in their way, but if you want a group that really hits that psych sweet spot, you need to meet Wolf People. Tidings, the first full-length by this young British band, is really just a gathering place for their early singles and such, but it's a hell of an appetite-whetter for their "real" first album. Ultimately, the band's flurries of fuzz guitar riffs and the unexpected twists and turns of their arrangements zero in on that late-‘60s/early-‘70s zone where the scrappiest strands of psychedelia were beginning to expand outward into the first flowerings of prog. Tidings abides at the place where the likes of Colosseum and Alan Bown straddled the psych-prog divide with one foot in canyons-of-your-mind kaleidoscopic visions, and one planted in realms at once more cerebral and more musically muscular. Sure, you can call it retro if you want to, but if you've ever had your head turned inside out by the sounds of the British rock underground circa 1968-'70, you'll understand exactly where Wolf People are coming from, and if you haven't, Tidings might well lead you down that path.