A staple on the Todd P circuit and tourmates of better-known, similarly minded experimental acts such as Black Dice and Gang Gang Dance, NYC's Psychic Ills have been making a racket since the early part of this decade. We last heard from them in 2006 when the band released Dins, which garnered moderate praise for combining drone-y elements with loosely structured melodies. In other words, there were enough quote-unquote songs buried in the album's murk to keep folks interested. With Mirror Eye, though, the group has decided to fully indulge their abstract tendencies, eschewing all traditional means of songcraft for a record that is almost wholly improvised.
Sound like a bad idea? It is. Neither a well-thought-out conceptual piece nor an attempt at instrumental ambience, Mirror Eye plays like a meandering, impromptu practice session recorded just for kicks. It seems designed only to please its creators and the band wastes no time pushing listeners away: They open the record with "Mantis", a tedious 11-minute drone sketch built around a continuous synth loop encircling a simple hand drum. Intrepid souls who don't give up there will find "Sub Synth" equally off-putting: Two aggravating minutes of hearing your dad's power tools in the garage through the walls of your living room.
Not everything here fails in such catastrophic fashion, but because the band noodles its way through Mirror Eye's druggy, sitar-laced exercises without any thought towards coherence (or completion), even its few promising tracks feel slapdash and unfinished. There's no reason that the blurry, vocal-treated "Meta", for instance, couldn't be fleshed out into something far more complex and hypnotic. ("Fingernail Tea" might also be rendered halfway decent with some extra TLC.) So it's hard not to question Psychic Ills' commitment to this improvisational technique, not only because it doesn't work, but also because we're watching their peers (have you heard Animal Collective have a new album out?) succeed at this very moment by doing the exact opposite: toning down oddball inclinations in favor of pop structures and greater accessibility.
Perhaps most frustrating about the group's failure is that, for all of Mirror Eye's drones, for all of its half-baked attempts to lull you into some psychogenic state, the record never enchants its listener and never intoxicates. ("I Take You as My Wife Again" probably comes closest, before abruptly deteriorating into background noise halfway through.) Which is unfortunate, because when music like this is done right (see Kranky acts such as Valet and White Rainbow) it can be not only seductive but also beautiful and grand in scale. In order to achieve those qualities, though, it's necessary to approach the work with much greater care than Psychic Ills have done here. If the band wants to be known for this sort of atmospheric rock (or any other type, for that matter), they're ignoring a crucial component to success: effort.
