Arriving just under a year after the release of the Danish psych-rockers third studio effort, 2019's liquid light show-ready
Eclipse,
Enter the Mirage delivers another tie-dyed blast from the past; a lo-fi, acid-soaked transmission from a mirror dimension where the Summer of Love never ended. Commencing with "Young Love, Old Hate," the hirsute trio goes all-in on the '60s fetishizing, administering copious amounts of noodly guitars and shimmery maracas drenched in analog reverb and delay, and a melodic through-line that echoes
Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower." One can almost envision the vintage God Bless Our Pad needlepoint embroidery that must have been hanging like a talisman behind the mixing board when cueing up "Hits of Acid," a treacly turn-in, turn-on, tune-in, drop-out anthem ("Smoke some weed and listen to some wax") that implores the listener to "Float away on a rainbow" and unconvincingly attempts to return the word "groovy" to the rock & roll lexicon. That said, the band never waver in their commitment to flower-power messaging and retro-pastiche, and that willfulness helps keep
Enter the Mirage relatively grounded, at least sonically. As musicians,
Sonic Dawn can lay down a groove with the best of them, as evidenced by muscly standouts like the funky "Soul Sacrifice" and "Shape Shifter," the latter of which flirts with stoner metal. Frontman
Emil Bureau's voice, which though double-tracked lacks even a modicum of power, remains the group's weak point, as does their aversion to anything resembling an earworm. In an age where eras have become their own genres,
Sonic Dawn need to do something to help differentiate themselves from their manifest influences, and casting lines without hooks certainly isn't helping matters.