by Conor Lochrie (@conornoconnor)
Scott Ryan Davis of Psychic Ills brings us an album vastly differing in tone to the experimental psychedelia of that band’s work, a welcomingly soft departure. Vincent’s Playlist feels intensely personal, a loving remembrance of the glory of guitar music. It’s informed and inspired by The Velvet Underground and New York proto-punk; the songs scratch and soar as if they had arrived from a Flying Nun Records release.
His old Psychic Ills bandmates Chris Millstein and Jimy Seitang joined for the album to fill out the rhythm section. Noted Chilean musician Sam Maquieira (The Ganjas, Wild Parade) offers his services too, playing guitar on four songs. It comes after last year’s album A Full Cosmic Trance, a collaboration with the Chilean psychedelic band A Full Cosmic Sound and Vincent’s Playlist was also released by the Santiago label BYM Records; quite the unique musical connection to one Latin American country.
It’s an undeniably easy listen, the songs on the record coming and going from memory in a cloud of quiet charm. There is no chaotic energy to the album but none is needed. Instead Vincent’s Playlist acts as the pleasant rock soundtrack to a weekend city gander. Watch the video for “Hello Lou Reed” and this idea becomes filmed: a static street crossing, between Flatbush and Dekalb in Brooklyn, waiting momentarily on a walk as caressing guitars surround you.
“High” immediately indicates the tone, sounding like a fuzzy track from The Clean. Vincent’s Playlist mainly switches between this type of scuzzy garage rock and the lighter touch of jangle pop tracks like “Color & View” and “Some People,” both resting on sweet guitar notes and upbeat melodies. “Sway” adheres to its title, the guitars swaying and swirling around Davis’ vocal, almost sounding like Stephen Malkmus in its drawl; “Radio Broke-Down” ushers in the same college rock feeling. “Mary Cassat” (presumably named after the American Impressionist artist of the same name) is the only purely instrumental song on the record, filled with a relentlessly jangling electric guitar drone.
It’s the aforementioned “Hello Lou Reed” that is the undeniable highlight though. The sprawling ode to The Velvet Underground master is an utterly entrancing guitar song. The explicit reference to Reed (“Lou Reed I just wanna say that I miss you”) feels just right too, for an album so emboldened by its rock antecedents. Davis understands the allure of guitar music, cherishes the form, and acknowledges the people who made it before him. In this way both “Hello Lou Reed” and the whole of Virginia Trance’s sound feels like a memorial to the goodness that can still be found in guitar music: some of the greats may be gone but there will always be musicians to pick up their mantle.