Wand – Memphis Flyer

This Thursday night, Timmy’s Organism and Wand will take the Hi-Tone by storm with two very different brands of psychedelic rock. Recently signed to Third Man Records (run by Jack White), Timmy’s Organism have a new record out called Heartless Heathen, and the band played a couple of shows on this tour with two other recent Third Man signees — Wolf Eyes and Video. While Third Man has never followed the rules of a predictable indie label (their discography includes work from Pokey LaFarge and Insane Clown Posse), the recent signing of three truly underground bands did come as a bit of a surprise, even when considering Jack White and Timmy Lampinen (leader of Timmy’s Organism) share the hometown of Detroit.

Timmy’s Organism

Lampinen has been waving the Detroit freak flag proudly for some time with bands like Clone Defects and Human Eye, but now, thanks to the reach that a label like Third Man has, his mutant space-rock might finally get the attention from the masses that so many of his devout followers believe he deserves.

On the other side of psych-rock is Wand, the Los Angeles-based band that last played Memphis on the heels of a breakout South by Southwest performance this past March. Since then, Wand signed to Drag City and released 1000 Days, their third album of loud, California psych-rock in three years. A lot of the music created by Timmy’s Organism relies on the unpredictable, and everything about Wand’s layers of noise seems calculated, but while both bands take different approaches to the same genre, rest assured that both sets will be loud.

Los Angeles psych band Wand play the Hi-Tone next Monday, their first time back at the venue since opening for the Ty Segall Band last fall. Wand come from the same school of psychedelic rock as California bands Thee Oh Sees and White Fence, representing the softer side of sun bleached rock and roll. Front man Cory Hanson also played in The Meatbodies and Together Pangea, two other prominent garage rock bands from southern California. While those two bands can easily be pinned to a genre, Wand’s music takes a little bit longer to digest.

Justin Tenney

Wand

On the band’s debut album Ganglion Reef, Hanson and company focused heavily on guitar tone, running their riffs through multiple synthesizers and effect pedals to create the spaced out, Frippertronics-influenced songs. Ganglion Reef goes pretty deep into the nerd zone with its references, with song titles like “Generator Larping” and the cover image essentially being fan art for the video game Final Fantasy VI. After touring for much of 2014, Wand found time to record their second full- length record Golem, and the album will be released while the band is on this month long tour.

Touring with Wand is New Orleans party rockers Babes, a band that is pretty much impossible to search for on the internet. Babes has a record on New Orleans label Pizza Burglar Records, and they’ve already developed a following in Memphis after stopping through town on several occasions. While they don’t have any songs about larping, Babes do have catchy garage rock hits like “We are the Babes” and “My Poor Friends Suck”, and they shouldn’t be missed on Monday. Locals Aquarian Blood open the show.