Psychedelic Horseshit and Times New Viking at Eyedrum
TIMES NEW VIKING: Who needs a keyboard stand when you’ve got a bucket of paint and a box of vinyl records? (All photos by Chad Radford.)
From the days of Pere Ubu and Devo on through Brainiac and Guided By Voices, middle Ohio has long been a fertile breeding ground for skewed hybrids of art-damaged punk and pop sounds.
Two trios from Columbus, Oh., Psychedelic Horseshit and Times New Viking passed through town last night to uphold the Buckeye state’s tradition at Eyedrum. After opening sets from Atlanta acts Tree Creature and Gold Painted Nails, as well as Sydney, Australia-based duo Naked On the Vague, Psychedelic Horseshit played a ramshackle set with drums and keyboards balanced on paint-splattered buckets.
On record, both Psychedelic Horseshit and Times New Viking shroud their respectively short, lobbed songwriting in a haze of lo-fi fuzz. At Eyedrum, the noise factor was an equalizer that served as a booster for both bands’ secretly catchy melodies.
Most notable was the transformation that came over TNV. The group’s recently released third full-length (and first for Matador Records), titled Rip It Off, sounds like it was recorded on a boom box. But when played live, the scratchy fidelity of each song melts away to reveal a wealth of rapid fire drumming and immediately catchy hooks.
The album is by no means a hard sell, but live the songs are propulsive, fun and much more compelling.
PSYCHEDELIC HORSESHIT
