Mooseheart Faith Stellar Groove Band - "Coronal Mass Ejection"
(September Gurls 1997, SGCD18)
From Aural Innovations #5 (January 1999)
Mooseheart Faith play West Coast song-oriented psych with a good sense of humor. The band is the work of Larry B. Robinson on guitars, keyboards, synths, theremin, and vocals, and Todd C. Homer on bass, synths, harmonicas, and vocals.
The 21 songs on this disc are mostly in the 2-3 minute range and have a 60's grounding. Much of these are well crafted pop-psych tunes. But the music is kept interesting by the varied and creative use of instrumentation. Several influences are apparent: On the one hand I hear the Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and the Byrds. But there is also an early Mothers Of Invention combined with the Bonzo Dog Band side to the music. ("My Silver Thimble" is a dead ringer for the Bonzo's "King Of Scurf".)
A sense of humor prevails throughout and this is apparent in both song titles and lyrics. "Hippie Cult Leader Anthem", "Horak's Moon Shaft", and "March Of The Mind Parasites" are among the wilder titles. And with lyrics like "Hale-Bopp Rockin', my vehicle is poppin', the human race is runnin' to outer space", you can't go wrong.
The band can get pretty and weird at times too. "Live Life Like Rainbow People" includes some cosmically vibrating phased guitar with harmonica and shooting star synths. "Horak's Moon Shaft" and "Past Space Ages Trance" are the band's forays into the avant garde. Horak has an attack on the piano strings, spaced out synths, and various other bubbles, bleeps and noises. And Trance sounds like Phillip Glass played backwards, complete with nearly six minutes of minimalist repetition.
If you like good fun psych songs with lots of humor but fresh sounding and creatively done, then Mooseheart is just what the doctored ordered.
You can visit the band at their IUMA web site.
Reviewed by Jerry Kranitz