Red Sparowes

The buzz around Los Angeles’ Red Sparowes reached an all-time low last month when rabid fans hacked into Neurot’s webstore and caused the limited-edition vinyl of the new Every Red Heart Shines Toward the Red Sun to sell out before its street date. All orders were cancelled, and the band’s reputation ascended to loftier heights. Despite their Isis/Neurosis pedigree, this creative group advance their psych-instrumental soundtrack rock that began with last year’s At the Soundless Dawn. (Their preposterously long song titles, best understood as one paragraph, are omitted here for space.) Tracks one through three revisit Isis atmospherics that crescendo with bass-driven muscle, while track four’s experiment in layering and texture could be inspired by late-career Jimi Hendrix mixed with twang-y country and western guitar chords. Tracks five and seven approaches the space rock of The Dark Side of the Moon-era Pink Floyd with rock-based progressions and rhythms, while track six involves a simple plan of plaintive piano and tree-frog ululations. Much like Pink Floyd wrote soundtracks for obscure ’70s films, Red Sparowes are a new Floyd, providing music for the mind’s movies while channelling every drop of meandering, Meddle-era drone for their own ends.