Mirror Woods

While listening to Mirror Woods, Landon Caldwell's debut album under the moniker Creeping Pink, one can easily imagine him hard at work in a messy home studio cluttered with junky, thrift store-salvaged instruments, half of which probably run on batteries. He uses cracked, short-circuiting electronic equipment to create fragmented lo-fi psychedelic collage-pop similar to Olivia Tremor Control but not quite as meticulously constructed or musique concrète-influenced. His woozy, hazy tracks constantly warble and buzz, and it often feels like the tape is slipping slightly off the reel. The most full-sounding, drum-heavy songs (such as "Mirror Woods" and "Shadow People Don't Care") start out as trippy Beatles psych-pop before devolving into messy, noisy feedback. The influence of Syd Barrett looms large, especially in Caldwell's vocals and lyrics, and "The Town" even begins with the first line of Pink Floyd's "Bike." Likewise, "By This River Again" is an obvious direct response to "By This River," Brian Eno's Cluster collaboration from 1977's Before and After Science, although Caldwell's song is trippy and distorted. As chaotic and hallucinatory as this album might seem, it's generally pretty serene; the songs are at a calm, relaxed pace, even as they're awash with hiss and mutilated effects. The album is a delightful, creative excursion into tape-damaged broken-synth psych-pop that is as inventive as it is blissfully weird. ~ Paul Simpson