September 23, 2011

Coke Weed: Garage Psychedelia from Maine

Bar Harbor, Maine's Coke Weed—who are apparently good buddies with The Walkmen— recently released their first full-length, the aptly titled Coke Weed Volume 1. While Coke Weed takes much of its musical inspiration from 1960s counterculture and rock & roll, it comes across as a sincere and authentic sound thanks in large part to the rawness of the production and recordings. Takes here are loose, jangly, and even unpredictable. The vocals in particular sound like they were all recorded in long single takes—no overdubs or cut and pasting—and that lends a certain imperfect charm to each track. The band describes their sound as psychedelic art garage, and that's not a bad fit, as along with the rawness there's an experimental almost free-form construction to songs. While "Not My Old Man" sounds like a Chan Marshall-led Velvet Underground roaring through soundcheck, "The Frizz" plays like the acid-tongued duet Johnny and June never recorded.

You can snag Coke Weed's entire album for free here.

Coke Weed - "Not My Old Man" (from Volume 1)
Coke Weed - "The Frizz" (from Volume 1)

The Walkmen

3 comments:

  1. best fucking band.

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  2. This is the new music video off their new album,
    http://vimeo.com/31284943

    ReplyDelete