Obscured by Clouds
Psycheclectic
In Music We Trust
When I first received Psycheclectic by the duo Obscured by Clouds, whose name comes from a lyric from a Pink Floyd song, my first thought was that this was going to be some drone-heavy electronic NyQuil. I was pleasantly surprised when I actually listened to it. It has a little bit of everything.
The opening track, “Soft Cheeked & Worried,” takes about a minute to get going, but once the acoustic guitar and piano get going, it starts to sound like the bastard child of Elton John’s “Rocket Man.” Then the vocals of William Weikart enter. He sounds like a darker version of Roger Waters. Especially on this track, the positive music and Weikart’s cryptic voice counter each other to perfection.
“Zoe Zoloft” is intentionally plodding with the drums, played by Poison Idea’s Thee Slayer Hippy (I can’t make this stuff up), keeping a heavy rhythm as if he just had his Zoloft. They follow that up with “Cast Close the Gate,” a straight-up rocker with an eclectically electronic twist. It’s like adding the lime to a Corona. It’s already good, but they made it just a little better.
“Faith’s Soul” is a page straight out of A Perfect Circle’s catalog. It’s almost seven minutes long, filled with guitar solos, lyrics that could have come from a seedy back alley (“Statues of stone will be a witness against us/ I am a ghost, finite, and transparent… hollow”) and an outro that could fill a stadium.
Psycheclectic is a record that has a little bit of everything. It starts off like it could be acoustic or even alt/rock similar to Days of the New. But once you reach track three of this eight-track, 41+ minute album, you realize that you haven’t even scratched the surface yet. One listen is not enough to get everything that Obscured by Clouds has to offer on this album.
Obscured By Clouds: http://www.obscuredbyclouds.net
