Sun Reign

By the time they released 2021s Sun Reign, Magic Castles had been making their brand of dream pop-influenced, garage rock-adjacent psychedelic pop for many years. Sun Reign proved to be the most difficult to complete as the band basically imploded, leaving mainstay Jason Edmonds to work on his own. He slowly chipped away at crafting a typically lush and full-sounding album, then suffered a near-fatal accident that derailed the process until he was feeling well enough to continue, which fortunately happened relatively quickly. None of the trauma of the accident or recovery made it into the music, though: Sun Reign is bright and peaceful psych pop, built on guitars that jangle and strum calmly, rhythms that flow like a hidden stream, and vocals that rarely lift above a whisper. These elements are stacked together gently, coated with a few thick dabs of reverb and echo, then set adrift like paper boats to bob along as they wish. Theres a peaceful beauty in songs like Asuras and Valley of Nysa that beckons the listener closer, a swaying ease to Surmise and Lost Dimension thats comforting, and a trippy haze on the slightly heavier tracks like the shoegaze-y Relax Your Mind that helps ground the album in reality. Only the occasional moment of proggy excitement -- like on the synth drone jam Meta Matters when the song takes off on a flight of fancy that could have been illustrated by Roger Dean -- threaten to break the immersive spell the rest of the album casts. The warmly psychedelic mood holds steady, though, and once again Magic Castles have delivered a record thats as easy to sink into as a cozy comforter. ~ Tim Sendra