Psycho Anomaly - Eat, Love, Slave

Psycho Anomaly

Eat, Love, Slave
self-released; 2014

3.8 out of 5

By J Simpson

Sometimes releasing and promoting a record can be counter-intuitive. With an inbox full of capslock message lines, with lots of asterisks and exclamation points, sometimes a homemade, hand-crafted records whispers above the din. Psycho Anomaly's quote on Bandcamp is, "I enjoy making music for fun in my free time." It doesn't get much humbler and more straightforward than that. His quality and commitment to writing interesting, hooky material is not that humble, however.

Eat, Love, Slave combines dirty, sludgy grunge, arty indie rock, and atmospheric electronics, to capture a wide range of emotions - from fear to romance to ridiculousness, and covers nearly every style of guitar-centric music of the last 3 decades, while doing so.

The album kicks off with "Drive", which is an appropriate title, as it bears many similarities to the jangling college rock of early R.E.M. The chiming guitar riff is simple but deadly effective, and makes the most of PA's limited recording resources. The drums sound like MIDI, but the programming is deft and nuanced, and just adds to the solo DIY vibes. Psycho Anomaly is doing the best he can with what he has.

"Cigarettes And Milk" is the mission statement of Eat, Love, Slave, as those items don't generally go together, but somehow, here, it makes sense. Psycho Anomaly's blend of lowdown fuzz guitars and sarcastic vocals, mixed with genuinely moving moments of total beauty, like on "Neo Noir", combines the smooth with the sickly; anger and love, coinciding, often in the same song.

When combining genres, you run the risk of inheriting the weaknesses of every genre you assimilate, as well as drawing on their strengths. Psycho Anomaly circumvents every pitfall of combining electronica and guitar rock, cherrypicking the best, and ditching the rest. His guitar riffs are economical, but well recorded - catchy and effective, and his tranceing synths sound fantastic! Truly deep, rich psychedelic production, as can be heard on "Beautiful Boy".

Let Eat, Love, Slave serve as a reminder that no amount of hype can replace talent and dedication. If your music is good, people will hear it, and it is our job, as listeners, to spread the gospel on quality tunes, when we hear it. We definitely hear it on Eat, Love, Slave. Don't let the drum loops fool you. Boston's Psycho Anomaly will have a 9 piece band one day, mark our words. Here's your chance to discover a young musician, on the ground floor, and lend support when it truly matters.

Recommended for fans of: R.E.M., Filter, Smashing Pumpkins, The Melvins

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