Spectral Haze

Of the many feats Luke Donovan pulls off on Spectral Park's self-titled debut album, one of the most notable is how he borrows from the past but avoids nostalgia. Donovan's music is rooted in bygone eras in its style (wild-eyed, psychedelic garage-pop) and how he makes it (tweaking samples taken from a box of records that were headed for the trash), but he rarely sounds wistful for days gone by. Instead, Spectral Park explodes the past and refashions it into something vital. Likewise, while there are hints of influences and kindred spirits throughout the album — Tame Impala's vivid sonics, Ariel Pink's ability to write new songs that feel like decades-old forgotten treasures, and Micachu & the Shapes' fondness for putting as many sounds as they can in one song then adding a few more, spring to mind — Spectral Park never feels overly reverent. Most of these songs are as energetic as those by Donovan's more straightforwardly garagey peers, but sound even more electrifying thanks to their oddness. Nowhere is this more apparent than on "L'Appel Du Vide," the song that put Spectral Park's name on the map when it arrived early in 2012. All yelped vocals, churning rhythms, and gloriously disorienting sound effects, it comes across like the Amboy Dukes' classic psych nugget "Journey to the Center of the Mind" if it had been produced by Joe Meek (and overshot its destination by several thousand light years). The song kicks off Spectral Park and remains its most incendiary track; while it could have overshadowed the rest of the album, there are moments here that are almost as instantly dazzling. On "Still," Donovan's impassioned delivery of seemingly cryptic lyrics ("I miss you more when you're here") and the mercurial sounds around him make him sound a bit like an outraged alien, while "Get You Gone" moves from dive-bombing shoegaze guitar to old-school garage farfisa in a matter of seconds. There are even a few songs that take their time to unfold: in particular, the soaring, harmony-driven "Shells" shows Donovan makes as much of an impression when working with a few sounds as he does with many. "Cut" slows down the album's mostly breathless tempo, only to speed up again at the end, giving words like "there is nothing left to love" a deceptively joyful cast. While there are plenty of songs that flirt with chaos, such as "Colours"' hallucinatory exotica and the warped elevator music of "Filler #54," Spectral Park's most approachable moments let the sonic melee serve the songs, as on "Ornaments," where what sounds like mangled bongos and garbled organ resolve into pretty, if somewhat melted-sounding, pop. Donovan's jam-packed songs — which are more like collisions than collages — border on overwhelming, but Spectral Park is so striking that it's worth risking sensory overload.