Maybe the name Strapping Fieldhands rings a bell? Maybe you’ve seen the name on flyers with Sebadoh or Pavement, or have them on a compilation CD also featuring Mike Rep and Guided By Voices? Maybe you’re already a fan and this post is a nice reminder to check in on ‘em? No matter how acquainted you are, their new album ‘Across The Susquehanna’ and 2018s ‘Alluvium Trinkets’ feel like reuniting with an old friend. The type of old-friend-reunion that’ll result in some good stories, a philosophical epiphany or two, and a hangover. Soundwise, SFH play self aware psychedelic skiffle like if Skip Spence was in Ego Summit. - Nic
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Fourteen brand new instant classics from Philadelphia’s original purveyors of fractured psychedelic shanty rock. Pared down to the original duo & every bit as potent they were in the days of The Demiurge, Bob Malloy and Bob Dickie assembled Across the Susquehanna in their private isolations in the year 2020 -- literally traversing the mighty Susquehanna River via the ether as they crafted the album. What they’ve come up with is yet another in the deep canon of Fieldhands classics, an album of uneasy lullabies rich with Barrett-damaged melodies, spare arrangements as likely to feature a horn section as an overdriven strat, and Malloy’s ever evolving vision of a timeless pastoral psychedelia. To those who have been following the Fieldhands from the beginning, this new one will prove an essential piece of the intricate puzzle. To those searching for an entrance into this hidden world, the way in is Across the Susquehanna.