Album Review The Lazy Eyes - SongBook

There are going to be obvious points of comparison for any new Australian psych band to live up to at this particular moment in time - Tame Impala and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard being just a couple of the more obvious ones - but if pressures of that variety weighed upon The Lazy Eyes during the making of this debut album, you’d never know. In fact, the world that the Sydney four-piece have conjured up on ‘SongBook’ sounds like one entirely free of care. The whole thing is tremendously woozy, taking its cues both from psych-pop - the trippier side of The Beach Boys is in the undertow - and psych-rock, with the group by no means averse to the odd noodling guitar solo. It’s a record that winds its way through the pantheon of the genre at its own pace; we’re on the home straight before a true prog jam shows up, in the shape of ‘Where’s My Brain???’, with the band happy to wander off down whichever stylistic avenue takes their fancy, whether that be the noisy sludge of ‘Fuzz Jam’ or, on the standout ‘Hippo’, gloriously mellow, blissed-out dream pop. ‘SongBook’ is a debut that suggests The Lazy Eyes have the guile to forge their own roads in a genre not currently experiencing a dearth of talent.