10. Hookworms - Pearl Mystic

‘Pearl Mystic’ isn’t an album that one listens to casually. On the contrary, one should just let ‘Pearl Mystic’ wash over him in a dark room during a summertime thunderstorm. It’s a difficult record, challenging in a way that sort of reminds me of the Jesus & Mary Chain’s best moments, although comparing the two bands isn’t really accurate from a stylistic sense. In any case, it’s a dark, noisy album that’s full of terror and wonder. Take the challenge.

9. Ty Segall - Sleeper

This was a tough call, but I’m glad we stuck with this and it remained on our list. Yes, “Sleeper” is probably most recognized for Segall’s departure from the pedal board and his neurotic-electric-frenzied norm, but is that so bad? If anything, I feel this departure is perhaps his most intimate, honest, and vulnerable album to date. It’s a somber rambling, an atmospheric sort of existential slow dive in the dark, all the while knowing that there will be light…eventually. This is one album that I can’t listen to just a single track. This is an album that demands front-to-back listening.

8. Crystal Stilts - Nature Noir

This is a Crystal Stilts record, and everything you’ve come to expect from them is here: jangling guitars awash in reverb, percussive drones, humming organs, and Brad Hargett’s lazy, ambling baritone. Yet ‘Nature Noir’ stands above band’s previous albums in one simple yet potent way: it doesn’t sound like it was recorded in a fish tank. Where those other albums suffered from the old ‘too much of a good thing’ – namely reverb, distortion and psychedelic murkiness – ‘Nature Noir’ dials it back and cleans it up, ultimately revealing what great musicians these dudes are when you can hear them play. Don’t get me wrong, it’s like I said - this is obviously a Crystal Stilts album, all of the elements are there. But those raw elements, through some strange alchemy called “better production,” have been transformed into sonic gold.

7. Holy Wave - Evil Hits

Although they’re from Austin, Texas, Holy Wave’s new LP, Evil Hits, sounds like something from some SoCal surf psych veterans. Through every track of this album I feel as though I’m riding some sun-sparkled spiritual wave toward some place better than the shit world where I live…Ebullient…With sonic velocity.

6. Bombino - Nomad

A pet peeve of mine: please don’t put psychedelic music in the “World Music” category just because the composing artist is from a country without readily available fast food. World Music is for old, rich, white liberals who feel vaguely guilty about selling off their ideals for a small, fleeting piece of the old, rich, white American Dream. In my opinion, World Music is basically sonic colonialism: a genre created by white people that exploits the cultures it pretends to admire by jumbling together many unique, diverse cultures into one big monochromatic, kente-adorned pile of goo. I bring this up because I came across an article recently that referred to Omara ‘Bombino’ Moctar’s (just Bombino on wax) amazing new Nomad LP as World Music. Yes, Bombino is an ethnic Tuareg. Yes, he’s from Niger. And to western, anglophile ears, yes, this record might sound a bit exotic. Forget all that – Nomad is a powerful record that creates a colorful, vibrant psychedelic pastiche using a wide range of influences. Sure, you’ll hear some djembe in there, but there’s also vibraphone, lap steel guitars and a droning organ or two, all of which give the album its exuberance and air of experimentation. If you love this record for anything, love it because, like all good psych rock, it’s so pure. But if you like it because you think it somehow makes your white ass appear worldly and cultured? Go fuck yourself. I don’t care if you were at Woodstock. Now you drive a Hummer, listen to Yanni, and check your Halliburton stock three times a day.

5. Night Beats - Sonic Bloom

Here’s what I have to say about the second LP from the Seattle-based Night Beats. It’s a sweaty, seedy, psych-love fuzz-fest of an album, rich with echoes from 60’s gritty Texas psych pioneers like Sky Saxon and 13th Floor Elevators. It’s perfect for afternoons of lysergic exploration, with or without artificial enhancements.

4. Thee Oh Sees - Floating Coffin

What more really needs to be said about Thee Oh Sees? An amazing band – live and on wax – that consistently and regularly creates great music. That doesn’t mean they’re predictable, though, and Floating Coffin proves they’re not at every turn. The album somehow manages to be instantly recognizable as a Thee Oh Sees album without sounding very much like their previous releases. It’s a lesson we all need to learn: always be yourself, but never become too comfortable staying who you are for very long.

3. Cult of Dom Keller - s/t

This self-titled album from Nottingham’s The Cult of Dom Keller, released five years after the band first began playing together, is a mind-numbing blend of cosmic catechisms, libidinous rhythm, and hypnotic swirls of distortion and transcendental guitar. It’s the soundtrack for mind-manipulation and reprogramming. Really, the only problem with this album is that they didn’t press enough of them. If you can get your hands on one, DO IT. NOW. No, really, do it. You can thank us later.

2. White Fence - Cyclops Reap

Tim Presley is a freak. This album is paisley scuzz fuzz at its finest. On Pink Gorilla, Presley manages to weave together every spaced-out nuance of classic psychedelic music and new garage into a trippy tapestry of a most powerful weirdness. And in an insanely productive year for the psych scene, that’s saying something.

1. Steve Gunn - Time Off

Nearly 40 years after punk noisily tossed out the notion that musicians actually need to know how to play the instruments they play, here is an intricately woven and softly spiraling collection of nimble guitar songs that quietly and unassumingly reaffirm how much musicianship still matters. The highlight here is Gunn’s guitar work, which moves in, around and through the rhythm section with a fluidity that’s oddly reminiscent of Grant Green’s finest moments. And like a jazz composition, these songs somehow manage to seem simultaneously improvised and carefully constructed. In any case, it’s an instant classic.

Honorable Mentions

Dick Diver – Calendar Days; Wall of Death – Main Obsessions; Bass Drum of Death – s/t; Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats – Mind Control; Mikal Cronin – MCII; My Bloody Valentine – m b v; Tony Molina – Dissed and Dismissed; Kikagaku Moyo – s/t; Jacco Gardner – Cabinet of Curiosities; Phosphorescent – Muchacho; The Oscillation – From Tomorrow; Neils Children – Dimly Lit; The Mallard – Finding Meaning in Difference; Herbcraft – Astral Body Electric; Sonny and the Sunsets – Antenna to the Afterworld; Aqua Nebula Oscillator – Spiritus Mundi; Wooden Shjips – Back to Land