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TRACK: New Wave Hippies

WHO: Psychedelic Horseshit, big players on the Ohio shitgaze scene. I’ve no idea exactly how big that scene is though. They could be killer whales in a musical goldfish bowl.

WHAT: A complete shambolic racket.

HYPE: "Pyschedelic Horseshit are the shitgaze frontrunners." - NME

WE SAY: Right, here’s the deal. There’s a very large chance you aren’t going to like this. Nobody would even give you odds on it. It’s ugly and amateurish – spitefully so, if the proud brandishing of bad reviews on their myspace is any indication. Musically, it’s about as together and coherent as Heather Mills and David Icke doing karaoke after a skinful of Icelandic fire water at a conspiracy theory convention after they’d been playing Touch The Truck for four straight weeks.

As mentioned, they’re part of a very small and not exactly appealing scene busting out of Ohio, along with others like Times New Viking and Eat Skull. It’s even got its own channel on Last FM and stuff, and people are already queuing up to decry it, so that lends it an air of legitimacy that it doesn’t yet deserve. With the naval-gazing intensity of shoegaze being an obvious reference point, there’s also a great deal of a bluesy garage influence, with a real sense of the intoxicated mess of the Black Lips.

New Wave Hippie initially hints at the bontempi darkness of The Kills, but then reveals that its aspirations aren’t so refined. What follows can only be described as the sound of an angry Mark E Smith stripping wallpaper with a distortion pedal.

But history teaches us that there’s always a place for the unsightly and the angular – from Beefheart to Doherty, shambolic performances have often reflected the more liberated creative mind, one that isn’t totally under the thrall of the safe and regulated mainstream. Aren’t garage and punk two of the most essential and durable rock sub-genres? And wasn’t it only recently that critics welcomed the return of My Bloody Valentine, who set out to create the most challenging, unlistenable show ever?

Of course that doesn’t mean that we should start recognising such artists at the Ivor Novellos, but the fact that they exist keeps things fresh and vital and opens paths that become more refined once co-opted by them mainstream. Plus they’re a damn sight more fun that The Hoosiers.

IF YOU ONLY NEED TO KNOW ONE THING: The band supported Yeasayer on their recent UK dates. Naughty boys that they are, they introduced them by saying: ‘Yeasayer will be on in a minute to kill the vibe’.

WHERE CAN I GET MY HANDS ON IT: Debut album Magic Flowers Droned is out now on Siltbreeze and the New Wave Hippies 7" is out now on Half Machine Records.

FIND MORE: www.myspace.com/psychedelichorseshit

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