A few weeks ago I did a write up for Boston’s Sunburnt Hand of the Man’s fantastic revival LP Pick A Day To Die, where I had the chance to indulge in the left-field antics of a band immersed in a field of progressive and psychedelic rock that has become all but extinct since Is This It kicked off a high-cheekboned revolt up in NYC. It made me realize just how adventurous rock music had become by the turn of the Millennium, how streamlined it became in the early Bush years, and how much I’ve been missing expansive, experimental rock in my current music diet. I’m therefore very thankful to be able to signal boost a band like St. Petersburg’s Liquid Pennies today.
Liquid Pennies first started melting cooper in 2018, releasing their first EP Floods in late 2019. After which they recruited violinist and vocalist Zoë Turtle in order to make the group a quartet. Their latest release Distant Dawn is a four-track album with the length of most LPs with three times as many tracks. While the band is often pegged as a surf rock group, this is probably not the best way of describing their sound. While they certainly have surfy elements,their closer much closer in both style and spirit to the collective, folk and psychedelic bliss of the ’60s groups like Pentangle and Mellow Candle, with a slightly more narrow, indie rock-influenced harmonic range and periodic injections of diesel to give the mix some extra lift.
“Camp” feels like it was written while tripping on some very tasty mushrooms while out on a hike in the Adirondacks, with guitar chords that sweep, span, and dive like they are rolling off wide, mossy cliff faces and spiraling into the trenches and valleys below. “Dissolver” has a slightly crunchier feel and a black-top burning momentum, sounding like something Brian Jonestown Massacre might muster in one of their more lucid moments of creative inspiration. “Left” leans into the band’s clear interest in twisty folk melodies and occasionally opens the door to let in a tempest of heavy metal thunder, sounding like a collaboration between The Incredible String Band and Hawkwind, with Zoë admirably imitating Marissa Paternoster’s distinctive yodle to great effect. The whole affair wraps up with “What Fun” which has the most constrained guitar melodies on the entire album, but they’re paired marvelously with the cool, brackish flow of Zoe and guitarist and vocalist Chas Binns’ vocal harmonies, to create a pooling reservoir of spirit engaging sound that will make you feel like you are phasing between planes of existence and loving every second of it.
You can stream the entirety of Liquid Pennies’s new album Distant Dawn below:
Buy a digital copy of Liquid Pennies’s Distant Dawn here.
