The Orange Drop - Stoned In Love

Birthed in 2007, the Five piece Neo Psych Philadelphian Experiment, Marc-Andre Basil - Guitar, Peter Stanko - Guitar, Dave Johnson - Keys, Matt Calhoun - Bass, Anthony Bove - Drums, The Orange Drop, inseminate our airwaves with their fourth-dimensional experience - Stoned In Love.

A swirling oil wheel effect on the album cover aims to give you a dose of the album's ethereal essence within nine tracks. The initial song medium paced 'Juniper Pearl', somehow has a flashback moment lost in a hazy chamber of emotion,  through mellow jangly guitars, and roomy bass and drums. The vocals are sincere and yearning, it has an early 9o's psych feel to it. The searing Ernie Isley/Edwin Collins guitar solo really intensifies the mood warmly.

Delayed chimed guitar droplets, lead into a tremolo smattered Pink Floydian-dreamscape on 'The Curse Of Kukaku', the ghostly vocals led tune, tends to drift from shots mellow to dynamic guarana bursts of energy. Though it brings you back into an ever-morphing lysergic lobby. Laced with generous helpings of transcendental guitar structures and solos that sound not dissimilar to a few mid-late 90's Brit rock bands such as Kula Shaker, Reef, and a trippier Radiohead. Some tanpura, droning strings and pulsing bass, lead into the fuzzy Brian Jonestown Massacred 'Make It Her, Forever', with a chanting, drums and vocals charge. It holds together well, layered organs swells, warm overdriven guitar excursions and adds further dynamic breaks.

After the last wake up call, it seems apt for a journey into a what seems like a mystical forest on 'Julia Dream'. Floating flutes soar in the distance whilst the vocals weave in and out of a guitar, keys, and bass crafted spacious crystal ionosphere. The booming pulse drum rhythm, tussles around the inside of your mind against echoed lingering hive-mind chanting loops, increasing intensely for a piece of your sanity, well that is what maybe 'Substance D' aims to achieve.

A pungent jangly jaunt in French keeps the happy vibes in remembrance on J'Admets' translated as 'I admit'. Bubbly bass, crisp guitars, and a content rhythm section make it more of a shiny happy refreshing experience. The album is past half-way now and brings in some mellow and tuneful acoustic guitar moments through 'Hey Man', with a somewhat sunset tainted drivetime invitation waiting. Which wholesomely continues half-time on 'Part 2', possessing a truly out-into-the-cosmos guitar/bass and drums episode.

Leaving us to ponder what we have just experienced is the fried vocal upbeat finale, If You Feel It'. A straight four-to-the-floor mover and again generously serves up interstellar guitar expressions.

What is truly overwhelming about The Orange Drop is that they come up with the goods and more on Stoned In Love, and whatever they have unleashed unto us, it truly feels as though a Neo Psych H-Bomb has gone off. You really would like to ask yourself, when it is time to come down, though with this band and others in the ever-expanding Psych-sphere at the moment sizzling our minds in their own inventive ways. it certainly does appear to be a long way off that time yet.