This has got to be a must for your ‘60s-obsessed buddy who won’t stop telling you that they don’t make them like they used to. Fact is, this is a deeply, sublimely, supremely psychedelic album that manages to be at the forefront of the 21st century free-folk avant-garde while simultaneously digging back to the roots of U.S. psych-rock by reclaiming the blues for mind-expanding purposes. The ghosts of Canned Heat and The Grateful Dead are the guiding spirits here, providing an electric, outlaw-blues context for jams that soon drift off into realms of mind-blown, pink-cloud psychedelia—with Valentine’s guitar adding layer on layer of dripping, gut-wrench fuzztone and Fahey-esque Americana—while Elder’s disembodied vocals drift through to us on a whiff of drug-haze eroticism. It’s a heartfelt, irony-free paean to the survival of hippy idealism and freedom that absolutely demands that you spark one up before listening.

• "Powderfinger" MP3
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