Introducing the Crimsmen

Album review

There's a fine line between conjuring a moody sense of psychedelic drift and just goofing off, and it's not always easy to tell just where the Peacers happen to lie on their second album, 2017's Introducing the Crimsmen. On the group's first album, former Sic Alps frontman Mike Donovan teamed with Ty Segall for an engaging set of garage-infused psych-pop that showed the band had a knack for enjoyably damaged songwriting and an artful embrace of low-budget production techniques. Both of those virtues are in troublingly short supply on Introducing the Crimsmen; Segall was out for these sessions, and the new lineup of Donovan, Bo Moore, Shayde Sartin, and Mike Shoun lacks the wobbly but purposeful sense of forward momentum that marked the band's debut. There are a few tracks that live up to the Peacers' previous standards, most notably the low-key but charming "Theme from Sonny" and the glammy overdrive of "Aboriginal Flow," but for every number that solidly connects, there's another that sounds as if Donovan and company made it up as they were going along, and not in a good way. "Organ Zip" is tedious, but thankfully it clocks in at just 51 seconds; "MA State Fugue/RTRN of the Roller" is over three times that length and manages to feel a lot longer. It's true that good pop can be noisy and chaotic, but it helps if it has songs that provide some aural roadmap and energy to keep things moving forward. Introducing the Crimsmen just doesn't have the tunes or the enthusiasm to keep it from drifting into the ditch during its 36 minutes, and while there's just enough that's worthwhile here that one shouldn't count Donovan out, maybe he'd be best off asking his buddy Ty to tag along for the sessions for Peacers Album No. Three.

© Mark Deming /TiVo