The Psychic Alliance

Mixing mind-altering psychedelia-lite with carnivalesque pop guaranteed to leave you with a sugar hangover, the Psychic Alliance seems to have come from another time and place. The temptation is to suggest the Vancouver-via-Calgary unit has arrived in a paisley-patterned time machine from the late ’60s, but that somehow doesn’t work, mostly because Flux Capacitor is too clever. So let’s suggest the band is more from a lineage that’s brought us the likes of early ’90s Redd Kross and Australia’s Hoodoo Gurus, groups that paid tribute to old Pebbles compilations with a lovingly knowing, retro-cool wink.

The playing here is insanely accomplished, from the disorientingly garage-y kick-off “Lunar Patrol” to the piper-at-the-gates-of-dawn prog of “The Psychic Detective”. In between, the Psychic Alliance imagines Ween doing the Beatles with “Cradle of Creation”, cooks up British Invasion–flavoured bubble-gum on “The Land That Cool Forgot”, and gives a good idea what Nashville would sound like doing Sid and Marty Krofft’s drugs with “Transfiggr’d”.

So what differentiates the band from those who were inventing this stuff back when the Floyd Dakil Combo was king? Well, as newly sexually liberated as people were back in the ’60s, you didn’t get them bridging new wave and rocksteady while singing “Your tits are big, your pussy’s tight/And when you get me to your place I’m going to bust my nut right in your face”. - Georgia Straight

The last time I was at the Rickshaw Theatre, it was pure punk territory, all leather-clad and eyeliner-smeared. Last Friday, however, the punk’s mortal enemy, the neo-hippie, had taken over for the Midwinter Festival, featuring three of Vancouver’s kookiest psych-rock bands: AtomAtom, the Psychic Alliance, and Tyranahorse.

Setting the acid-laced tone, Atom Atom kicked off things with a surge of bluesy, ’70s-inspired rock ’n’ roll. The rootsy quintet played the tightest, most promising set of the night, as the crowd got into the groove with some of the weirdest dance moves to ever grace the Rickshaw’s sticky mosh pit.

The festival had a pagan-costume theme, which explained the guy wearing Easter Bunny ears and the girls wearing gold moon masks and pussy-willow crowns. Why paganism? No fucking clue, but it made all the wacky dancing that much creepier and more fun to watch.

Even with all those distractions, AtomAtom’s lead vocalist, Erika Valliere, sheathed in a sheer green cloak and a wreath of flowers, sang her heart out and stole the show. Her rich, whisky-laden pipes brought Alison Mosshart and Florence Welch to mind.

Next up, the Psychic Alliance proved to be one of the most obnoxiously ridiculous bands I’ve ever seen. The psychedelic new-wavers took the pagan theme to an extreme, employing some masked fairy cohorts to light candles and fire off glitter cannons on-stage, before ripping up handfuls of hay in some kind of baffling ritual.

Later, the fairies frolicked through the crowd and hugged attendees, handing out paper hearts with “I love you” scrawled on them. All of this, teamed with the band’s energetic, ’60s-garage-rock flourishes, sent the audience into a frenzy. One fanboy with a build like Frankenstein started literally twirling and skipping around in circles, enthralled by the fairies’ gossamer wings. It was downright surreal.

At that point, I began to fear for my life. The Psychic Alliance was clearly an insane religious cult, and had probably spiked everyone’s drinks with MDMA and cyanide. A screen projecting artsy visuals displayed an error message: “Your device has been disconnected.” That was exactly how I felt.

The balloon- and sparkler-toting crowd was into it. But the Psychic Alliance’s fondness for dated keyboards, irritating falsetto, corny doo-doo-doo-ing, and all things tacky, combined with the silly gimmicks, made it difficult to hear why. When its madcap frontman Shaun Lee declared, “This one’s for all the shitty bands,” you had to laugh.

The most absurd band name award goes to Tyranahorse, fronted by experimental artist prOphecy sun. With a kaleidoscopic blend of psych rock, pop, and alt-country, the eccentric quintet topped off the fest fittingly.

Occasionally rocking out on, ahem, a kazoo, sun shared vocal duties with guitarist Darren Fleet, but eclipsed her bandmate with her hypnotic charisma. She looked perfectly comfortable on-stage, as if performing was as natural to her as breathing, and her deep, dramatic voice resembled Siouxsie Sioux on pep pills.

Despite tiresome theremin noodling and an unnecessary super-hipster song about bike-lane bylaws, Tyranahorse entertained to the end. Chants for “One more song!” coaxed the band to close the night with trippy, cosmic noise, sun wailing like a heathen priestess as candles were lit in the crowd.

Although they’d been hoping for an animal sacrifice, the pagan gods were surely pleased. - Georgia Straight

“At that point, I began to fear for my life. The Psychic Alliance were clearly an insane religious cult and had probably spiked everyone’s drink with MDMA and cyanide.” I can understand Vivian Pence’s trepidation. She was an unassuming Vancouver hipster sent into a den of weirdos by the Georgia Straight and now she was facing down against an already crazed crowd being driven further into madness by the pounding psychedelic pop of The Psychic Alliance. But, she made one mistake: The Psychic Alliance would never do something as wasteful as mixing a slow acting chemical like MDMA with an instantaneous poison like cyanide. That’s just a waste of good drugs.

Also, killing your audience tends to make for a really bad show, which is not what this cult — I mean, band — is about. It’s been almost two years since the band made the move from Calgary to the coast, yet their new home leaves them wanting.

“Vancouver needs to loosen the fuck up, live a little and have some fun,” says Shaun Lee, lead singer of The Psychic Alliance. “There was a time in Vancouver when you would see some bands that would seriously scare the shit out of you and you just don’t see that anymore. There’s a serious fun police problem. Vancouver is full of pussies, cowards and chicken-shits, which even people from Vancouver would agree with. I think it’s because they don’t listen to enough country music.” Shaun continues, adding, “I’m really glad this is running in a Calgary publication.”

“We’re a polarizing band in a polarized city. We’re too smart for the dumb people and too dumb for the smart people,” says Marc Guenette, lead guitarist.

It’s not too surprising that the band hasn’t been met with open arms everywhere they’ve gone in Vancouver as the boldness of their statements is matched by their performances. They’ve been banned from more than one venue, but their overall impression of Vancouver is still positive. “It’s different in all the ways you want it to be,” says Lee.

This month The Psychic Alliance will return to Calgary to release the album that was recorded live off the floor in Calgary prior to the band’s relocation. “The world wasn’t ready for this album two years ago. It’s still about seven years ahead of its time,” Lee says of the upcoming release. As for the show in Calgary there was talk of dancing bears, a mongoloid boy playing the tambourine and the reanimated corpses of FDR and Stalin in a bare knuckle brawl to the re-death. “Also we’ll have Kyle fucking Qidl, which is more than anybody else has,” Lee boasts of their bass player. Regardless of the sideshows, any night spent with The Psychic Alliance is sure to be memorable, no matter how much you may want to forget it. - Beatroute

2010 marks the $100 Film Festival's seventh Annual Film/ Music Explosion! This year brought in an amazing amount of musical submissions, but in the end only three can be chosen!

This year's $100 Film Festival festures film and music collaborations by:

Band: The Psychic Alliance

The Psychic Alliance began expanding people's minds through music a little under a year ago, through their psychedelic rock and high-energy shows. Although relatively new to the scene, The Psychic Alliance are no stranger to the road playing some of their first shows to audiences outside of Calgary when they embarked on an impromptu tour through the Okanagan last year. You can expect this local Calgary band will plowing their chaotic rock and roll train all over the world and right into space.

http://www.myspace.com/thepsychicalliance

Filmmaker: Duncan Kenworthy - CSIF $100 Film Festival