Send Medicine - Mermaids on The Veranda

Everybody seems to have their definition of what psychedelic music should sound like today. From those that insist on ’the roots’, ie the sound that is firmly situated on anything between the US West Coast and London in the second part of the 60s, to those that think it includes all kinds of genres including dance and electronics, something particularly exemplified, for example, a few decades ago by The Stone Roses.

As evidenced on their second album, Mermaids on The Veranda, Los Angeles band Send Medicine firmly belong among the second line of thinkers. No wonder, since “Corduroy”, the opening track and the lead single on the album bring in quite a few fond memories of the Stone Roses classic debut.

Send Medicine do bring quite a few other elements into the mix though. That should be no surprise to those who are at least a bit more familiar with this band and its leader Julian Hacquebard, who started the band as a freak-folk trio (guitar, flute, drums) in Toronto.

And while the Britpop/psych influences with a dance touch are evident on other tracks like “Comes Home Late Again”, (Stone Roses again) or “My Baker”, which sounds like something Marc Bolan has written down in his idea notebook, others, like “Courtney”, veer more into the folk/psych direction so connected to the West Coast Sound, particularly The Grateful Dead. On the other hand, “Shakes Me Too” shows that Hacquebard and the group have a hefty outlaw country collection, with Townes Van Zandt having a prominent place there.

But Send Medicine don’t stop there and seem to be able to channel all that diversity in the right direction, coming up with music that could actually satisfy practically everybody in either of the ‘psych philosophy’ camps. At the moment they seem to be experimenting with all the ideas that they throw in, possibly to pick up on one strand and hang on to it.

Whether they keep on juggling or stick to one idea wouldn’t really matter, I look forward to seeing where they go next.