Album review: The Warlocks – The Mirror Explodes

The Warlocks, like many of their Californian contemporaries, are a Marmite band – you’ll either love them or hate them. Familiarity with their back catalogue will tell you which side of the fence you fall on, but even old hands might remark at the bleak melancholy that underpins their latest offering, The Mirror Explodes.

For the uninitiated, The Warlocks come from the same school (and, indeed, the same label) as such doped-up post-psychedelic rock acts as The Brian Jonestown Massacre. We’re talking slow fuzzy epics, drawn out and stretched like chewing gum in hot weather, played on old instruments at high volume with an ear for the huge yet haunting. To put it another way, it’s a vibe somewhere between a drug-smeared spaghetti western and the more scary bits of Easy Rider… or the soundtrack to a party where everyone else is pilled up and happy, but at which you’re slumped in a corner on some cocktail of painkillers and homebrewed LSD that would make Hunter Thompson cry for his mummy.

This has always been the case with The Warlocks… but by comparison to last year’s Heavy Deavy Skull Lover, The Mirror Explodes is darker, more forlorn, a series of shakily handwritten letters sent back from the frontiers of existential experience. To put it another way: these are songs made by people who have been very wasted indeed, and who want to try to communicate that wasterdom to you, the listener. That’s not to say that you need to be a veteran of mind-altering substances to appreciate The Warlocks… but as the old gag goes, it probably helps.

For some, the appeal of rich layers of tone may be enough; The Warlocks produce a dense sound with two drumkits and multiple guitars heard as through a pall of smoke, with organ tones sneaking in through the unlocked window from time to time. If you can close your eyes and lose yourself in post-rock stuff, The Mirror Explodes might well flick your switches; it has that same architectural quality, that sense of evolving space inviting exploration.

But you’d better be prepared for some bleary laments on the side; the consistently languid pacing of The Mirror Explodes turns chord sequences and basslines that would be pure Californian pop into nostalgic pipedreams, punctuated by the heavy-lidded and mournful mantras of frontman Bobby Hecksher. There are still moments of striking melodic beauty waiting to bum a light from you, but there’s a whole house of memories for you to fumble your way through before you find them all.

I find it well worth the challenge; you’ll know within the first few minutes of the opening track whether The Warlocks are the type of party you want to hang out at. Sure, it’s not everyone’s cup of Earl Grey – The Mirror Explodes makes mid-career Cure albums sound like pre-teen pop – but if dark psychedelia’s your bag, it’s time to take a trip with the best dealer in town.