How do you become considered a classic in any music genre or sub-genre? Is it how long you’ve been on the scene, how many fans or just cult fans you have, how many records you have come up with, have you been recognised by other artists, something else or all of the above?
the black watch could boast with probably all of the above as one of the psych rock stalwarts still around and still recording (16 albums and EP’s, maybe more, under their belt), including that recognition from other artists, in their case specifically another psych rock stalwart Nick Saloman of the Bevis Frond Fame, who just released their lates album Varied Superstitions on his Blue Matter Records.
So, more specifically, what kind of psych rock…
Tag Archive: The Black Watch
Album number 25 from the extraordinarily prolific Black Watch, the power pop/1960s mod project of John Andrew Fredrick is even more expansive than usual. It’s a double, for one thing, clocking in at 21 songs and 67 minutes, and elaborately arranged, incorporating strings alongside standard rock instruments.
The long form allows Fredrick to try on any number of rock-adjacent styles, from the plaintive, near-folky minimalism of “The Hook Stuck,” to the echo-shrouded, Black Angels-esque garage of “Much More,” to the Apples-in-Stereo-style fuzz bop of “Surely You Rally.” Sure, it’s mostly mildly psychedelic Beatles/Kinks lineage guitar rock, akin to the output of other lifers like the Bevis Frond and Anton Barbeau. However, there’s….