One Track Mind is the fourth album by decade-old New York group Psychic Ills, and it continues in the same art-house vein as their previous albums of downtempo psychedelia, grooving across strung-out soundscapes and rolling in listless, distorted dream-pop. The band members state that this time around songs were crafted with compositional structure in mind, as opposed to their usual method of jam-and-see. The results yield tracks and melodies that individually feel strong, but an album that altogether possesses lack of variety and lets itself play out too repetitively.
“One More Time” and “Might Take a While” exemplify the album’s strengths. Beyond a slight peppering of folk and funk, these tracks rightly avoid flare, bringing their heavy lidded vocals upfront and sticking to a signature feel of straight-forward melodic lines and consistent psych grooves. “See You There” and “Depot” drift into haunted ghost-town environments, hypnotically unearthing atmospheric swells and grave vocals, but the former falls into a monotonous groove that just won’t end while the latter expires most of its material by a minute’s time.
“FBI” is another solid one, a work of bluesy minimalism which wafts torturous, serpentine notes over its cool grooves and vocals. “I Get By” skims an upbeat groove underneath a droning voice while “City Sun” dabbles with a very folksy harmonica. The instrumental “Western Metaphor” ricochets haunting echoes across a sparse soundscape and the gloomy wistfulness of “Drop Out” is well-supplemented by a hazy nebula of distorted strums and ponderous chord-progressions.
It’s all good music, but there’s something about each of these songs that feels too much like the one that came before it, and their individualities fade out against the consistent over-use of the same basic bass and guitar elements. Psychedelia has always been a realm for experimentation, so I guess I can’t help feeling like there could have been more to this album; it seems just a step or two away from structures that would have succeeded at higher levels.
