Mirror Mirror

So think of the weirdest bits of ‘Oracular Spectacular’. You know, the mind-expansive, lip-wibbling, acid-reflecting moments. The bits that tipped into the dark netherworld of Syd Barrett and Peter Green. It’s these fragments of brain-altering consciousness and freak-out psychedelia that Mirror Mirror have harvested and made their own on their darkly beautiful debut album.

Hailing from the same scene that birthed the leftfield, minimal electro of Telepathe (Ryan Lucero plays in both bands) their sound is, like, totally cosmic but, somewhat surprisingly considering teetering-on-the-edge psych-pop has saturated the hipper end of ’08, also never gets too much to take in. ‘Don Coyote’s Confession’ begins like a hymnal bad Beach Boy chant with the duo intoning “I’m thinking of buying a gun” with enough Charles Manson-like menace to make sure you’ve double-locked your door at night. It then flips into a Super Furry Animals-like rocker before shapeshifting into a leftover Last Shadow Puppets tune. ‘Eugene’ splutters with the deviant sexual spirits of Of Montreal, ‘Darling Nikki’ and ‘Sexy Sadie’. Images spill out as fast as the music flips and grinds direction, genre and mood. This is a very special record; in fact, it’s one of the year’s best psych-rock concoctions.

Priya Elan