Ultimate Painting – Ultimate Painting (2014) review
Ultimate Painting – Ultimate Painting (Trouble in Mind Records, 2014)
In interviews Ultimate Painting often underhandedly indicated that they want to break away from their breezy 60’s inspired obsession of jangling guitars laced with hypnotic layering … and to that I ask, “Why?” This is what Ultimate Painting does best, and they’re doing it better and more seamlessly than most bands who’ve embarked on this adventurous sound.
When this neo-psych genre first hit, I was making comparisons to The Byrds, Brian Wilson, Love, and so many other bands who rose from those wondrous nights so long ago … but enough time as passed that current neo-psychedelia stands on its own now, and rightly so, revealing groups who are no longer relying on the past, rather building on it in a structural and emotional manner that’s in and of the moment. There’s a dynamic richness to what’s presented here, and though yes, you could certainly say that these sounds have been heard before [sort of], though in all honesty, you have not heard these sounds in this manner before, or so satisfyingly jam packed with unrelenting hooks and swagger that you’ll find yourself nearly out of breath just from listening.
This is an uncomplicated album to listen to, and of course that means that means that it’s far from uncomplicated, delivering interlocking guitar solos, washes of sound and a melancholy of brilliant haziness that will smother your soul.
Review by Jenell Kesler/2016
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