SuppliedLee Harvey Osmond
Beautiful Scars
Latent Recordings
latentrecordings.com
The genre of psych-rock is one filled with a multitude of good artists, but few great ones. Many projects capture the slow, seductive pace and trance-inducing vocals, but few ever truly tap into the full nature of psychedelic music.
Unfortunately for Lee Harvey Osmond, their music falls firmly into the category of good, instead of “great”. There’s nothing wrong with their latest album, Beautiful Scars, but there’s nothing particularly special about it either.
By experimenting with a variety of sub-genres within the overarching grasp of psych-rock, Lee Harvey Osmond attains a great cross-section of musical ability with Beautiful Scars. From the soothing campfire-rock tones of “Come and Go,” from the sexy, saxophone-ridden “Blue Moon Drive”, Lee Harvey Osmond manages to cater to a diverse crowd, creating an album that will undoubtedly have wide acclaim.
What stops Beautiful Scars from being a truly great psych-rock project is the lack of cohesive feel between tracks. A truly great psychedelic album gives the listener a borderline hallucinogenic experience from the second the needle hits the record to when it’s lifted. The same diversity that will cause the album to be widely acclaimed and enjoyed is also what prevents it from being a great psychedelic experience. The differences in song structure and genre between tracks are almost jarring, and impede a cohesive listening experience.
At the end of the day, we’re often left with many good musicians and very few great ones. For the time being, Lee Harvey Osmond will have to reside firmly in the “good” category, due to their attempt to do too much within the confines of one album.
Kinda harsh! The thing that keeps this album from being “great” is not the songs but how you feel the songs hang together as a whole as a single artistic presentation? Really?