Manzanita

Named after the Manzanita shrub labyrinth growing outside the Bay Area's Louder Studios, where this album was recorded, Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound’s third full-length finds the San Francisco band taming its off-the-rails acid rock for well-crafted songs bursting with sunny harmonies. “L.A. Sacrifice” oozes a calmer psychedelia, as frontman Charlie Saufley and his sister Camilla sing tightly braided vocals before unleashing allocated bursts of their fuzzed-out lysergic leads. In the following “(Gone) Round the Corner,” galloping rhythms, twangy guitar picking, and drawled inflections from bass player Jefferson Marshall all culminate to create the kind of cosmic Americana that not even Gram Parsons could conjure in his heyday. “Blue Wire” is another reverb-soaked gem that swings and saunters with a smoldering strut, letting the sublime melodies gradually work their magic on listeners. The musicians in Assemble Head are anomalies in acid-rock revivalism; rather than try to re-create sounds and tones from the past, they build on them with newer ideas that are both relevant and innovative.