It's a Love Cult

The 14th album by Norwegian psych-rockers Motorpsycho finds the band adding electronics, strings, and horns to its power trio sound, stepping away from the heavy acid rock of earlier albums for a more varied and lighter sound. The first four songs alone leap from Neu!-style drone rock (the brilliant "Uberwagner, or a Billion Bubbles in My Mind") to folky acoustics ("Circles") to pile-driving garage rock (the soaring "Neverland," easily the catchiest song they've ever recorded) to jazzy improvisations ("This Otherness"). The rest of the lengthy album is a series of variations on those four basic styles, though not all of them are as successful as others. Highlights include "What If?," which bears a strong resemblance to Da Capo-era Love, complete with mariachi trumpets and Farfisa organ stabs, the slow-boiling "The Mirror and the Lie," which incorporates the strings and horns into a psychedelic roil reminiscent of their heavier earlier sound, and the freakbeat homage "Composite Head." The weak track is the overlong "Carousel," although the pummeling "Custer's Last Stand (One More Daemon)" doesn't quite work up the lysergic head of steam it should. Overall, though, It's a Love Cult represents a fruitful new change of direction for Motorpsycho.