SXSW 2012

Hypnotic, elusive New York experimental rock band Psychic Ills took shape in 2003, when they pressed their own 7" and started playing shows. They’ve remained ambiguous and often hard to classify through the years as they’ve traversed a variety of musical terrain and personnel changes. Recently, Tres Warren, Elizabeth Hart and co. have emerged with a seemingly more streamlined and accessible approach to their original blend of music as displayed on their record Hazed Dream for new label Sacred Bones Records. “Faced with a deluge of groove based psych, many listeners failed to notice Psychic Ills peculiar idiosyncrasy, and they got subsumed. Now that all is quiet, or quieter, on the kaleidoscopic rock front, it's easier to hear the radical economy that sets them apart. While most freaked-out churners give in to the temptation to throw everything into the cauldron and boil, Psychic Ills cherry-pick their ingredients and slow roast till golden... a mirror in a desert gently turning in the breeze” – The Wire Magazine Psychic Ills have been releasing assorted hazy slabs of vinyl since 2004, but most people know these NYC transplants from their '06 proper debut LP Dins, a crashing storm of noise and pop that bent shoegazer techniques through a perma-stoned, cult-like filter that could burn holes through apartment walls. Following that came an extended period of self-discovery through abstraction, with recorded documents that went further out, dug way down, captured the band at practice and left us to sort it out for ourselves. Hazed Dream marks a return to form, then, at least one of a band that's trying to write pop songs in the three-to-four minute range with some degree of success. All of the excess is burned off here like dust in votive candles strewn across the hardwood floor. Energy levels never rise above a browned-out choogle, but that's alright, the Ills finding a niche for themselves between Opal's Happy Nightmare Baby, Spacemen 3 demos, and the sunrise that greets us each morning. This is a supremely burnt, incredibly cool album based on repetitive concepts, blues riffage, and dark sunglasses, content to purr along while the world races past. It'll make the mood juuuuuuust right wherever you are.” -- Doug Mosurock, Dusted Magazine/Other Music.