Paige Drobot - THE PSYCHICS ALBUM
Transistor 66 Record Company
Released December 1st, 2023
“Get up in the morning and I jump right out of bed, feeling so productive, got ideas in my head”—so begins the newest release from Winnipeg’s Paige Drobot. The ambitious prog-pop album showcases a pastiche of styles from the 60s and 70s, including surf rock, jam band, and fusion. Delivered with impressive musicianship and adventurous songwriting style, it could only be the brainchild of an artist who flies out of bed bursting with innovation.
Drobot established herself as a formidable singer and guitarist with her former band, The Psychics, to whom the album title pays homage. She now performs under her own name, collaborating on songwriting with Psychics bassist Cody Rey Valentonis.
The lyrics return more than once to the theme of creative and questing lifestyles. In between slinky guitar solos, washy drums, and a bossa nova breakdown, “Spare Time” explores the artistic process: “I’m taking my time on this one, and I’m letting it work itself out.” The time and deliberation show on an album that exhibits both intentionality and spontaneity.
Songs frequently flow between musical theatre-like grandiosity and charming psychedelic diversions; “Hope it didn’t psych you out!” the band playfully sings, following a lengthy and increasingly chaotic improvisatory interlude in “Space Music.” Drobot and Valentonis’s compositional styles are often narrative, eclectic, and audaciously defiant toward a Spotify algorithm that favours brevity and repetition.
“Nicotine Smile,” on the other hand, is straight-up funky rock music, wah-wah-soaked and heavy on the Hendrix Chord. Drobot pines, “I fell into my shoes this morning … The alarm clock sounded like your voice to me,” conjuring a character the narrator can’t help but keep phoning up, despite her better instincts. The track closes with a hefty bass solo and one of the deeply satisfying guitar riffs that Drobot excels at.
Another highlight is “Each Another’s Creation,” which contemplates consciousness in the spirit of the innocent metaphysical endeavours of the 60s. A Beatle-esque bridge unfolds into a gleeful bossa callback that frolics into the final chorus like a hallucinated butterfly crossing a DayGlo sky.
The passage of time and how we choose to spend it are recurring themes. The closing track, “Each Passing Day,” mourns, “Each passing day I think of how I could live a little more, if I only had the time”—relatable sentiments for an era when the world seems to hurtle further and faster from the imagined simplicity of the decades when these ideas were first expressed in music.
Drobot poignantly sings, “Somehow we live this life, never knowing who we are, never knowing how to love or who to give it to.” Hopefully, such observations might remind us to spend our precious time well—beginning with, perhaps, a second or third listen.
- Ava Glendinning
