Here comes dirt in a groove and an effortless flirt with a post Hacienda drugged haze. We congregate around Stone Roses with the fug of Primal Scream, while Moon Duo and The Horrors lend their loves of electronics. Repeated detuned chimes and feedback, the lightened layers of grime and grunge, it’s persuasive, enigmatic, washed in waves of hushed distortion.  

Ok, so it’s dressed ugly, wrapped in attitude-soaked indie, but the fuzz is fleshed out and deceptively lean as we touch on 60s psychedelia. Amongst the mesh of warm guitars and all the hard struck slushed-out drums, decayed and garbled twists of synth slip in and out of focus. Above a bass that only shows its face when other sounds allow, acoustic jangles add a lightness to the compressed scrawl and sprawl.   

As the cool pressed propulsion keeps on pushing through the track, the more I dig, more I find, the more I fix on. It’s like a series of mirages, lime green plastic Long Beach palm trees next to pink flamingo statues, they appear and disappear like apparitions. Vocal verses and keys cut a rough Q&A, there’s a heavy debt to post punk and its later evolutions. Synthlines bleed out into feedback as they pick up from each other, every effect and affectation easily feeds into the next.   

In the mesh and the haze and the destitute wash, in the scrum of the sounds and their fights for position, those glimmers of synthplay keep sweetness in sight while we’re kept safe from anything clean.   

We’re four singles in from The Lizards, each release sees a tweak in direction. Their modern-day psyche sound gains weight with each track while they keep their cult throwbacks at core.  

‘Plastic Dream’ is out now, and as always this track and others as reviewed and featured can be heard here on Rats On Run Radio.