On their debut full-length, New York-based quartet
Turnip King play a splashy, energetic blend of caffeine-rush indie pop and sprawling psychedelic jams. As contradictory as that sounds, somehow they manage to make it work. Almost all of the album's songs stretch past five minutes, but it rarely seems like they're aimlessly rambling. The group have a wonderfully fluid, reverb-heavy guitar sound that they expertly control from a gentle drizzle to a vast flood, yet it seems to wash rather than drown. Likewise, the drums are prominent and often quite busy, but they never overpower the songs. The songs flow from calmer to more worked-up (but not exactly heavy) moments without coming close to any sort of
Pixies-esque quiet verse/loud chorus formula. The group channel their '90s indie rock influences (
Helium,
Eric's Trip) and inject a generous dose of additional dreaminess. The album's poppiest moment is "Carsong," a simple, pretty song about driving to a golf course with friends. Elsewhere, they get lost inside intense swells of echo on tracks like "Metonymy." On songs such as "Dead Flowers," they race up speeding tempos and attack with noisy guitars, and seem to become so overwhelmed by the ecstatic rush that the only way they can end is by slowing things down to an ambient drift for a few minutes. The album's longest cut, "Rosy's on Safari," is also its most daring, ripping into a jarring, pile-driving rhythm laced with wavy guitars before segueing into a more reflective spoken word midsection. The chiming guitars lead into an extended jam, during which multiple vocal tracks populate the mix, some of which are heavily manipulated via cassette tape. Laika is a refreshing release by a promising group of creative spirits. ~ Paul Simpson