Psych-Ward

The Urges – Psych Ward
Reviewed by Sadie O., 12/29/07
Gnarly 60’s style garage rock mayhem with a bit of psychedelia, from Dublin. Drums, guitar, bass, lots of farfisa, and larynx-shredding vocals – rather a one-trick pony, but dammit, it’s a good trick! Cleans yer synapses out real good.
No FCCs detected, but I couldn’t make out much of shite anyway… Mostly all pretty similar, really, but I liked 2, 7 and 10 best.
1. 2:41 ***classic “Nuggets” high-energy garage rock with guitar and farfisa in union, plenty of screaming.
2. 2:12 ****like track 1, but louder and faster and not so much unison. Some seriously insane laughter, and really great guitar solo.
3. 3:12 ***midtempo and a bit sweeter/psychedelic, with more organ, but entirely odd vocals. Whammy bar! How can you go wrong with both whammy bar AND farfisa?
4. 3:00 ***you can do the frug to this, but don’t be fooled – it’s nice and disturbed.
5. 2:36 ***starts out with some evil groans, then midtempo fuzz and lunatic noises.
6. 5:10 **slow and bluesy, really rather nice. The epic ballad of the CD (and doesn’t appear to have much to do with the Elevators…) Ooooh, it just turned not so rather nice for a bit! Psychedelic mayhem! Yay!
7. 3:52 ****sweet – very Blues Magoos-y, with a slight Spanish tinge.
8. 2:34 ***power chords and scream – then a sort of garage version of “Stepping Stone”. Better than I make it sound…
9. 3:02 ***midtempo, nice basic licks.
10. 2:28 ****uptempo manic romp with really annoying high pitched farfisa – this is the kind of stuff that used to make my mother really go nuts…
11. 3:16 ***pure adenoidality. This time the guitar and bass are in unison. Oh, the utter angst! Truly sick vocal effects towards end, too.