It’s brand new
If Love Psychedelico topped the charts in the States with the same brand of ’60s nostalgia that conquered the Japanese pop charts, it would still be a magnificant feat.
In a musical landscape full of packaged pop, nu metal and (worst of all) Creed, Delico’s debut album The Greatest Hits is an anamoly at worst, a miracle at best.
(Kind of like how the Strokes and Mean Machine managed to sound total new by sonically photocopying Television and the Velvet Underground — respectively.)
In reality, The Greatest Hits was little more than an after thought. Anyone who got hip to Love Psychedelico six months before the duo released the album heard most of the songs already — six of the 11 tracks are available on the singles.
As a result, Delico’s second album, Love Psychedelic Orchestra, sounds positively fresh. Only two singles preceded the release of the album, and most of the material is entirely new.
Repeated listens, however, reveals Love Psychedelic Orchestra is more of an album — a collection of songs meant to feel like a single unit.
When “green” segues seamlessly into “dry town”, Love Psychedelico demonstrate how this time around, they were thinking more ambitiously.
Although KUMI and Sato Naoki still maintain their slavishly devotion to period sounds — those same clangly klaviers, those same wheezy organs, those same jangly guitars — the songs feel darker, and they fit together more nicely.
The “House of the Rising Sun” atmospherics of “dry town” leads nicely into the mellow “I will be with you”.
The infectuous klavier hook that introduces “Standing Bird” makes a good companion to a similarly catchy intro on “Freeworld”.
“life goes on”, with its country-rock groove, makes for a suitable lead-in to the mono rocker “‘0′”.
Although Love Psychedelic Orchestra sounds like its predecessor on the surface, deep down it’s the album The Greatest Hits should have been — cohesive, tighter, focused.
Love Psychedelico has found its voice, and now the duo is refining their songwriting chops.