THE PSYCHEDELIC COWBOYS

Jangle Waltz

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The Psychedelic Cowboys come out of Los Angeles playing cosmic American music with the accent on cosmic. Imbued with the ambience of the Red Dog and the Acid Tests, Jangle Waltz seems fashioned like a vintage trip as applause, radio excerpts, and conversations float betwixt and between the music which conjures the spirit of Love (there’s a cover of “Alone Again Or’), the later Byrds, and Workingmans-era Dead.

The core line-up of the band is augmented by a host of other players identified as ‘cosmic dads, sons and daughters’. These include Chris Hillman, Probyn Gregory, Don Heffington, and Mike Stinson. They’re mainly playing originals from singer and guitarist John Harlan, but as well as the Love tune there’s a Johnny Horton song and Randy Weeks’ Last DWI’. Everything is warm, slow, and stringy; a gentle mood of dislocation pervades.

Instruments make short but striking appearances; a pedal steel in ‘Alone Again Or’, a harpsichord at the start of the unreconstructed ‘Don’t Lean On Me’, and beautiful flute in ‘Little Sipasake And The Fate Of Lonesome Wayne’. Meanwhile Harlan’s voice carries a tinge of rasp that keeps the attention while never jarring.