Mow The Glass, the second album from The Lavender Flu, is a startling and breathtakingly smart record which came out just last Friday. The record was rehearsed and recorded in a small house in Oregon on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. In other words distinctively lo-fi. But it certainly doesn't sound it. It's an album that arrestingly recalls a bygone age of psychedelic American voyage and discovery.
A project driven by Chris Gunn, (also of The Hunches), and a rotating circle of like-minded friends and associates, Mow The Glass is an album that just invites the description lysergic and comparison with golden and possibly long since unplayed records and bands in your collection.
Austin, Texas's favourite sons The 13th Floor Elevators are the most obvious and immediate reference point here. The Flu, like the Elevators are insistently frazzled and saucer eyed and come across occasionally as verging on mass-derangement in terms of their approach. But at the same time they are also acutely disciplined. Only one song goes beyond four minutes and every track is deeply imbued with fierce, righteous wonder.
Apologies for spitting out whole sections of the thesaurus here but Mow the Glass is an album not only deserving of it but actually requiring it if it wants to be adequately described. In addition to the Elevators it recalls the phrasing of Dylan in his 'wild mercury' phase, the transcendental chime of The Byrds, Moby Grape, Country Joe, The Seeds and also Television who redrafted this stuff through the prism of New York street experience in the Seventies. Sonic Youth and early Mercury Rev and Flaming Lips also flit in and out of the mix occasionally.
Mow the Grass is more bucolic than much of that. It touches on Cosmic Country on occasion. But it's also wired. And strangely at the same time rather thought through and sculpted. Structured chaos.
There's plenty of stuff around these days a bit like this, (particularly coming out of America), but very little of it is both as thought through as this and yet still manages to come across as so utterly spontaneous. I've found listening through to it over the last couple of days a glorious trip, (sorry, but there you are), in terms of experiencing epiphanic moments that send me spinning back in search of their source.
This may not reach an enormous audience, (not many of the band's obvious inspirations ever did), but it really should. The band have very little social media exposure and possibly prefer life under the radar's blip. Nevertheless, you'll do well to hear a better record of its sort in this or many a calendar year. The Lavender Flu. Listen to Mow the Grass and 'gaze upon the chimes of freedom flashing.'
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