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Photo courtesy of US/Them Group

Crack Pipes, Legendary Austin Soul/Garage Outfit Returns With First Album in 11 Years, ‘Fake Eyelashes’ (album stream)

You may not have a volume knob that reaches high enough for how loud the Crack Pipes' Fake Eyelashes needs to be played. Keep America dirty.

Fake Eyelashes is the latest offering from psychedelia and soul outfit the Crack Pipes. The Austin outfit is issuing its first LP in 11 years on Friday, 19 October via Super Secret Records.

The opening, titular piece recalls a kinder, gentler Neil Young and Crazy Horse, while “Lil’ Cheetah” is anything but gentle, the band sounding as angry and angsty as the day they were formed. “(I’m A) Moon Man, Baby” takes a page from Roky Erickson’s patented brand of horror rock, adds a twist of tasty kitsch, and drives headlong into a crowded parking lot, smashing and bashing at the walls of subtlety with a power and conviction that’s hard to come by in an age where there’s hardly a rock musical underground left to shock and surprise the normies in Middle America.

“Sweet & Low” arrives with a ferocity that could make a statue run; “Sha-Zam” sounds like Creedence Clearwater Revival jamming with Ted Nugent’s Amboy Dukes at Cosmo’s Factory while waiting for the man; “My Underground”, meanwhile, is the theme of an espionage thriller that has yet to be made. All of it adds up to an aural adventure that’s much more of a trip than you could bargain for. Dark, dirty and glazed over with a middle finger pointed at conformity and all who catch it, there’s nothing fake about Fake Eyelashes or the Crack Pipes.

With influences that run the distance from Traffic and Miles Davis to Grant Hart and Johnny Rivers, the Crack Pipes remain a singular act on the American musical landscape.

Please, help keep America countercultural.

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