The Red Krayola "Psy Ops"

They’re back dudes. Okay, sort of. They’ve been on Drag City since ‘94, and main Krayola Mayo Thompson (think Roky Erickson if you don’t know, or Robert Pollard if you still don’t know) has been cranking out live discs, represses of old deleted singles and greatest hits comps since the band “broke up” over thirty years ago. For those that need a Krayola primer, they were originally “Red Crayola,” but duh, had to change that shit, and came up in the same Texas-psych swamp as 13th Floor Elevators (same label too, I think). They released two records before breaking up; one I’ve never heard, and the other (God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail WIth It) (buy) holding twenty sub-three minute tracks of sparsely populated folk-rock (psych-jazz) minimalism. It was the opposite of 13th Floor Elevators (more akin to a toned-down Captain Beefheart), and much more influential over time—from the misshapen “lo-fi” bands of the late 80s and early 90s to Pere Ubuthe spazzy Brooklynites (Excepter, Animal Collective) of right now. And Introduction—perhaps it’s because it’s actually coherent and totally listenable—is the best collection of songs Thompson’s released since no one bought his first record almost forty years ago. You can never predict how an iconoclast will age, and how his music will age with him, espeically when that process happens over the course of forty years. But the skronky, alarmist guitar of “Psy Ops” (mp3), with Thompson’s calm, dark incantations (”I go sometimes where cigarettes are food”) and John McIntire’s (Tortoise) steady drumming demonstrate that, despite some pretty serious advances in recording technology, we’re hearing what we always should have been hearing from the Krayola, gawd bless.

Bonus mp3, from God Bless the Red Krayola: “Ravi Shankar: Parachutist” (mp3)

Get Introduction from Drag City here.