You don’t have to look much further than the title of both band and album to assume that what THEE AMERICAN REVOLUTION offers is trippy psychedelic rock. Masterminded by APPLES IN STEREO leader ROBERT SCHNEIDER and his brother-in-law CRAIG MORRIS, and bearing the long-in-hibernation Elephant 6 logo, Buddha Electrostorm dances underground indie psych pop back to the garage and the four-track, slathering generous layers of fuzz and bad speaker distortion over melodies that rock harder than anything in Schneider’s back catalog. Suppressing the bubblegum side of his personality while still maintaining his interest in sticky hooks, Schneider kicks out the fuzz-rock jams as much as he’s able here, given that his squeaky voice isn’t particularly suited to this kind of rough treatment. The distortion through which Schneider runs his singing is the only thing that keeps his larynx from being lost in the din – indeed, the lo-fi blare becomes wearing by about the halfway mark. Fortunately, the songs (“Blow My Mind,” “She’s Coming Down,” “Power House”) and performances (dig that wah-wah break on “Saturn Daze”) are strong, paying homage to the indie fanaticism for 60s psych without disappearing up its own dayglo rectum.
