Shawn James Morgan

Nick Drake and Mac DeMarco are at a house party. They sit, smoking, just looking at guitars. Slowly, they start to dream together, and their smiles widen. The dream becomes a song, and that song becomes and album. All the other party attendees cheer and sway to the sounds of their music.

That’s Marshmellow Champignon in my head, played out in cinemascope. Cocagne Chimera put this beautiful little psych assemblage into play in Coteau-du-Lac, Quebec. The sound of the record is that of an isolated time capsule — little sound memos to be tuned into later on and extrapolated.

The production is all done by the Cocagne, and it sounds beautiful, bruised and up close. All the guitar work, percussion, accoutrements of musicality, and vocal work churns out like water through a creek bed — wild, weird, and coursing true.

Some highlights:

-“Drunkard Humingbird” has the sound of some of the oompah lovelorn sound of late sixties Brit heavy psych folk — the sideways nursery rhyme approach.

-The effect-laden cruiser of a tune “Out of the Tree” is a great song if you want intricate psych that sounds like it was made in a cabin in the woods — and why the hell wouldn’t you want that?!?

-“Wonders at Night” is like a trip through a reed-filled riverbed, where guitar lines grasp at your legs’ bare skin as you make your way across

This little piece of psych folk is worth the listen. Put it on, light your mental fireplace, and let the world unwind around you.

Top Track: “Drunkard Hummingbird”

Rating: Strong Hoot (Good) - Grayowl Point

Five-alarm hangover after Four Loko fantasy under psilocybin sundown. Ripples in time-space like your ugly mug at the ammonia-soaked bottom of the local reflecting trough. Depanneur dance. Gas-bar glissando. Casse-croûte crash. Green light melts into yellow melts into red, like hot tamales in your shoes. Rise and shine, sweetie. It’s tea time. - Weird Canada

Perhaps better by the moniker Cocagne Chimera, Shawn James Morgan is back with more of his psych folk/freak pop. The title track to his latest album is a Beatlesque number that has a couple of complete flights of tripped-out fancy. - Ride The Tempo