All Night Radio

The difference between pop and psychedelic music is that pop music is meant to placate the listener regardless of how bad the songs may be, while psychedelic music is meant to make the listener uncomfortable regardless of how good the songs may be. Unfortunately, there’s a sizable portion of psychedelic music that uses neat sounds to mask uneven songwriting. Certainly, that can be said of a couple of songs found on All Night Radio’s debut release. “Oh, When?” is driving but runs out of gas halfway through, and “Fall Down 7,” with its half-rapped verses, is just silly. The rest of Spirit Stereo Frequency is quite solid and sometimes very, very good—“We’re on our Wave” is of the latter category, sounding like a lost recording of a meeting between Big Star and The Byrds. Much of the album follows suit, and there are neat sounds too.