After the success of 2009’s Up From Below Edward Sharpe And The Magnetic Zeros quickly became known for their feel good, folksy indie-rock but with the release their third, self-titled album, they’ve gone retrograde, straight back to the free loving 1960s.
“Let’s Get High”, along with many other songs on the record, has been lifted straight from the John Lennon songbook. Hand claps, trumpets, and a hip-twisting basslines dance along as singer Alexander Ebert’s raw voice claims “God and Allah would be pleased, don’t you know it’d make no difference to Christ/We’re all Jesus in disguise”.
Ringmaster Ebert must have been channelling the late Beatle’s pacifist mindset too, as the group croon “War, war is the ego/of men’s repressed libido. According to Ebert, peace is the giving/A piece for everybody”, but one can’t help thinking that Lennon’s “all we are saying/is give peace a chance” is the more timeless aphorism.
Yes, peace and love are universal themes but as this album rolls on, to use Ebert’s own words direct from “Better Days”, “that’s some cliché shit”.
Despite lifting its melody from Cream’s whimsical 1968 ditty “Anyone For Tennis?”, “If I Were Free” is the album’s most genuine moment.
The track sees the group at their most political and a truly hallucinogenic guitar solo fleshes out the bones of the song.
Likewise, the plaintive loveliness of Jade Castrinos’s voice is under-utilised. When it is spot-lit, as in the folksy duet “Two”, and “Remember To Remember”, her vocals shine and lend a much needed point of engagement that is lacking from the rest of the record.
This is an album heavily rooted in the legacy of the summer of love, and though the musicianship is hard to fault, listeners of today may have trouble engaging with the messages.
