The Wands - The Dawn
- Written by Kenneth McMurtrie
As debut albums in the currently burgeoning psych scene go The Dawn is right up there with this year’s best. Hailing from Copenhagen the duo initially paved the album’s way with the release of the title track as a single as many as seven months ago, as well as a notable performance at the 2013 Liverpool Psych Fest.
Backed with the non-album track ‘Totem’ that single is about as trippy as you can get, with its opening line of “Magic beans & broken dreams”, effect-laden vocals and woozy guitar parts. Suggestions to “go and get it on” and other refrains do not though ever tip the balance over into one of cheesy mimicry – there’s a clear underlying seriousness of purpose and obvious talent amid the acid-drenched colours.
And so it remains with The Dawn. Opening track (and recent single) ‘Sound Of The Machine’ is a pleasingly playful, fuzzed-up drone of a song. Naïve images (abandoned toys, pseudo-Lost Boys ready to pick a fight) abound, backed up by a firm grounding in the music of the likes of The Pink Fairies etc. This is no Lenny Kravitz crossover but the real deal.
Pace-wise The Wands maintain a pretty easy one throughout but ‘She’s Electric’ chugs along at a livelier, head bobbing tempo as well as featuring some of the album’s stand-out guitar and organ work. ‘Get It Out Of Your System (Don’t You Wanna Feel Alright)’ also induces a fair bit of movement as you let it inveigle its way into your system. Whilst a few of the songs could do with slightly more length (‘She’s Electric’ being a prime example) that feeling of wanting more is never enough to bring the listener down to earth with a bump, so well does the album fit together as the sum of its parts.
Fully returning on the faith many people put in them upon hearing their initial Hello I Know The Blow You Grow Is Magic EP The Wands have delivered, on one hand, exactly what was expected of them whilst simultaneously managing to show that they were capable of better and could well exceed that best next time around.
