A Modern Psychedelic Rock Primer in 5 Bands

By 1965, many British rock musicians had long been scouring record bins for American blues music. But the garage rock blues of the 1960s, fueled by drugs and Beat literature, transformed.

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The Yardbirds, with Jeff Beck, created some of the earliest psychedelic rock, as heard on “Heart Full of Soul.” At the same time, The Byrds pioneered a new sound in California with a mix of folk music and British Invasion rock. This followed the early space rock heard on “Telstar” by The Tornados (1962). Or the prominent tape echo reverberating throughout “Any Way You Want It” by The Dave Clark Five (1964).

Many groups also looked to India, using 12-string guitars to mimic the drone of a sitar, as in “Ticket to Ride” by The Beatles. And The Kinks’ “See My Friends” helped establish what became known as raga rock—the combination of Indian classical music and rock and roll. The harmonic expansion continued with experimental studio effects and also the kind of improvisations and jams heard in jazz.

Months later, The Beatles released “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown),” which featured a sitar played by George Harrison. Soon, artists like The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys, Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, and The Doors led psychedelic rock into its peak period (1967). However, the scene wasn’t without its casualties: Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Hendrix died young (age 27). And Peter Green and Syd Barrett withdrew from their famous bands (Fleetwood Mac and Pink Floyd) due to the excesses.

With that breakneck and incomplete history above, check out these five modern psychedelic rock bands below.

Tame Impala

Kevin Parker releases music under the name Tame Impala. He recorded his 2010 debut Innerspeaker on a remote beach in Australia—an earthy escape usually reserved for the hallucinogenic drugs that first anchored the genre. Parker self-produces and performs all the instrumentation on his recordings. He’s also an in-demand producer, collaborating on hits by Lady Gaga, The Weeknd, and Dua Lipa.

While most psych-rock bands aim for retro productions, Parker has modernized the genre. He’s the most-played artist on this list. Tame Impala’s “The Less I Know the Better” has nearly 2 billion streams on Spotify.

The Brian Jonestown Massacre

Anton Newcombe started The Brian Jonestown Massacre in San Francisco in 1990. The name, of course, references the late Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones. With a revolving lineup, Newcombe blends ’60s psych-rock with ’90s shoegaze and dashes of acoustic folk. Yet, he focuses mostly on the revolutionary periods from rock’s past. And he’s remained defiant in the face of emerging trends.

BJM earned wide attention from the 2004 documentary Dig! alongside The Dandy Warhols. It’s not rare for BJM concerts to erupt into onstage fights between bandmates. A memorable scene from Dig! finds Newcombe, after an onstage brawl, outside the Viper Room in Los Angeles, talking about his busted sitar.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

Continuing San Francisco’s long history of psychedelia, Peter Hayes and Robert Levon Been formed Black Rebel Motorcycle Club in 1998. Hayes had just split from The Brian Jonestown Massacre, and he and Been connected with English drummer Nick Jago to complete the lineup.

They borrowed heavily from The Jesus and Mary Chain and The Verve’s early, jam-oriented period. Leah Shapiro, a touring drummer for The Raveonettes, replaced Jago in 2008, and the band continues to make droning garage rock that’s driven by Been’s fuzz bass, Hayes’s wall-of-sound guitars, and the pair’s dazed-and-confused vocals. Also, Shapiro’s powerful grooves call to mind how the great Moe Tucker anchored The Velvet Underground.

The Black Angels

Don’t even think about starting a psych-rock band unless you have a functioning reverb tank. The Black Angels arrived from Austin, Texas, and took their name from The Velvet Underground song “The Black Angel’s Death Song.” Like many in the scene, this band isn’t concerned with reinventing rock and roll.

But just because a path is well traveled doesn’t make the experience less interesting when in the right hands. The Black Angels have released six albums of slow and droning grooves. And the deep blues of their Texas roots separate them from others consumed by psyched-out jams.

MGMT

Like Tame Impala, MGMT represents the opposite side of psych-rock’s reliance on nostalgia. The duo’s 2007 hit “Kids” sounds like the past meeting the modern era. Part of their breakout happened when a University of Southern California student created a viral video of fellow students lip-syncing to “Kids.” MGMT then invited the students to appear in the official music video for “Electric Feel.” You can hear the influence of Flaming Lips—psych legends themselves—on MGMT’s debut, Oracular Spectacular.

Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser also produce dark electronica as the duo exists on the threshold between pop music and neo-psychedelia. If you only know “Kids” or “Electric Feel,” check out the title track to MGMT’s fourth album Little Dark Age.

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