Pocket T-shirts. Growing up in the 70’s, I looked up to my older cousins. They wore jeans and pocket T-shirts, so that’s what epitomized cool.
Wake Up Lucid is the music of the pocket T-shirt. Their debut EP, Look Alive People, is drenched in the waters of 70’s classic and psychedelic rock. The L.A. band wields guitars as power tools in the garage working on cars. They employ rhythms to bang down society’s norms like vandals in vacant, half-finished houses. Yet, they can strum out an acoustic pattern (“Words”) like Clock Hands Strangle on an AltCountry beat. They jam out on a bluesy vamp even while bringing on some headbanging (“A Minor”). Like other 70’s minded bands such as Parlor Mob or Invade Rome, Wake Up Lucid takes you back 40 years in rock ‘n’ roll only to bring you much farther forward than you thought you were.
Bridges & Blinking Lights
In that same vein, Bridges & Blinking Lights on their Heros, Guns & Snakes play psychedelic/prog rock that sweats with the blues. “Undercover” opens the album as it jams along. While they “sing gloria hallelujah” on “Home Free,” it’s a kind of Appalachian takes on 70’s rock. “Solo American” begins with a clear nod to the guitar-led bands of the 70’s with its bluesy vamp sliding through the scales before going into the song’s twangy core. It’s capped off with a return to the bluesy vamp. Makes the album worth it right there.
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[...] Blues Rock by Benjamin C. Squires — Leave a comment January 2, 2011 Earlier in 2010, I reviewed Wake Up Lucid calling them “pocket T-shirt music” for the way they recall 70’s rock in the [...]