If you haven’t had enough of the psychedelic powers that flow inside your body, you are in for a big surprise for an artist coming from the outskirts of New Orleans, Louisiana who is keeping the legacy alive. His name is Kevan Caldwell. His recent new project simply called Caldwell, started out as a strong hope for delight at the peak of pandemic was happening and the split of his former band, The Planchettes.
According to the Rise Above website, Kevan has taken inspiration of his hometown who described it as America’s Last Bohemia and has embraced the nostalgia, novelty, the sense of humor he brings in his music, and what people are going through during these tricky times. Listening to Caldwell’s sole self-titled debut on Rise Above Records sub-label Popclaw, it’s a trip back in time to the ‘60s where the British Invasion, baroque pop, and the sound of Lenny Kaye’s Nuggets box set from the garage rock years are like a stick of dynamite, waiting to explode, at the right place, at the right time.
From the Mellotron vaudeville, hand-clapping sing-along technique of a ‘Picturesque Self-Portrait’ that has lyrical boundaries from the minds of Ray Davies, Harry Nilsson, and unsung hero John Howard to the harpsichord romance of a ‘Love Confession’, Caldwell pulls in a lot of admiration of what he’s done. I can hear not just George Harrison, but Seeds guitarist simply known as Cooker who did the solo on ‘Pushin’ Too Hard’ rings certain bells that comes to mind.
The hallucinated introduction on ‘No Flowers Today’ features its heavy wah-wah pedals and organ exercise, followed by the mysterious waltz with its harpsichords, bossa-nova bass-like samba, and eerie guitar lines to meet the ‘Garden Gnome’ while going into an acoustic Kinks-like approach from their Face to Face years as Caldwell dives into the ‘Dandy’ sing-along medley of meeting another dedicated follower of fashion, ‘Theodore Sullivan’.
It’s quite a revelation to hear someone to take the torch of the mid-to-late ‘60s period alive and making sure it doesn’t hit the salty waters, and never let it burn to the ground. We might want to keep an eye on what Kevan will do next.
