#psychedelia

#psychedelia

Alex Ian Smith, the primary force behind the New York-based project Railings, sounds nothing like Cobain, but his voice induces similarly vicarious listening. In " Breaking the Bong," the opening track of Railings' 2017 album, ) (, he darts from guttural highs to velvety lows and then breaks into an effortlessly clear falsetto. It warrants the most preposterous-sounding comparisons: Prince meets David Lee Roth; David Thomas with the lung capacity of Benny "The Voice" Mardones.

As fixtures of Edinburgh's gig-turned-performance art scene, Acolyte's eerie, earthy psychedelia is just as likely to be found on stage at the Traverse theatre as in a steamy-windowed Leith Walk boozer. Their looped bass lines and poet Iona Lee's commanding, velvety voice conjure a sense of slow-burn hypnosis and just like their music, Acolyte are glamorously unhurried. They've released only a handful of songs in the seven years since Lee and bassist Ruairidh Morrison first started experimenting with jazz, trip-hop and spoken word.

But much like the Coral's music, there's an eccentric, unpretentious charm to this film. Visually, it is an imaginative collage of childhood photos and lo-fi animation mixed with archive footage and home movies. There are no modern-day talking heads, only voiceover narration and the fact that we lose track of which band member is talking kind of fits with their collective ethos.