Album Review: Arcadian Child, Protopsycho
With their third album, Protopsycho, Cypriot four-piece Arcadian Child enter a new stage of realization. Their progression has been quick in terms of productive turnaround from one album to the next, with 2017’s Afterglow (review here) getting picked up by Ripple Music‘s imprint Rebel Waves for release in 2018 ahead of the band’s second album, Superfonica (review here), that same year. Lockdown 2020 brought the live album From Far, For the Wild (review here) and word of Protopsycho in the making, and its arrival through Ripple, Kozmik Artifactz and the band’s own Bitter Tea Records finds Arcadian Child at a pivotal moment of their progression in terms of finding their sound. As in, they have.
They do so amid a swath of cultural and aesthetic influences. Cyprus’ position as an island nation finds it situated near the Middle East, Mediterranean Europe and Northern Africa, and Arcadian Child dig into melodies and rhythmic progressions endemic to the region. Early on Protopsycho, the second half of opener “Snakecharm” unfolds a groove that feels born of classic Greek psychedelia, and the winding melody of the subsequent “Wave High” builds on that feel in terms of style, as guitarists Stathis Hadjicharalambous and Panagiotis Georgiou (the latter also vocals), bassist/backing vocalist Andreas Kerveros and newly-arrived drummer Constantinos Pavlides purposefully bring together such traditionalism with a modern edge, not just as regards their own tonality or the production — the album was recorded, mixed and co-produced with Andreas Trachonitis in Nicosia — but on a deeper level of composition as well.
Perhaps most of all, Protopsycho is conscious of what it’s doing sound-wise without necessarily being restrained by that. It is the tightest core of songwriting Arcadian Child has yet brought to bear — which is saying something — and its eight tracks and 37 minutes play through with an unhurried but consistent motion, heavy but fluid thanks in no small part to the intricacy of their rhythms throughout and the apparent ease with which they tie together their verses and choruses. “Snakecharm” and “Wave High” are joined on side A by the more lumbering “Sour Grapes” and the apropos finale “The Well,” which begins at a drift and solidifies in its second half around a classic fuzz rock riff transmuted tonally and in tuning to suit the band’s purposes. In both, there is an emerging current of modern heavy influence, particularly centered around Nashville heavy psych/blues rockers All Them Witches.
It is telling that Mikey Allred at Dark Art Studio mastered Protopsycho, as the former member of Across Tundras has also worked engineering and mastering several All Them Witches albums. Something about the shimmer in the guitar on “The Well” and in “Bitter Tea,” which follows, leading off side B, speaks directly to that. There’s a blend of meditative spaciousness and creative spark that comes to bear feeling like a signature. And yet there’s no denying Arcadian Child make this their own as well, and in purposeful form as “Bitter Tea” begins with a Dying Surfer Meets His Maker-style guitar progression and unfolds with a fuzzy gracefulness and confidence born of a mature band who know what they’re doing. Again, this is Arcadian Child being aware of their choices as a group but not held back by that conscious.
“Bitter Tea” and the subsequent “Bodies of Men” are the two shortest cuts on Protopsycho at a respective 3:52 and 3:38, but the tone they set for the second half of the tracklisting isn’t to be understated, as the latter cut picks up with Dead Meadow-style roll in its brief excursion of verse and hook, letting the fuzzy tones of the two guitars lead the way as the vocals push further out in echo, bass and drums providing the solid foundation on which the quirky but structurally sound bounce takes place. The penultimate “Raising Fire” is something of a slower and more ritualized psych burn, vocals following the guitar pattern before fuller tonality kicks in as part of the call-and-response chorus’ thrust. All the while, the abiding atmosphere of “Raising Fire” is patient and built around a tempo that refuses to move at anything other than its own pace for the first four minutes of the track’s 5:35, drums signaling the shift thereafter into a more uptempo instrumental progression that carries the song to its finish.
The splashing crash cymbal deep in the mix of the title-track signals some of the tension Arcadian Child are building as the finale plays out, but though they hit a payoff sure enough, “Protopsycho” never takes off to such a degree as to feel cheap or especially predictable. Rather, it emphasizes just how much the band have been able to set a mood throughout Protopsycho and how far especially side B has worked to bring together the different sides of their sound, the varied folk and psychedelic and heavy influences, not forsaking one for the other, but creating something fresh from pieces of all of them. This is, as noted above, the work Arcadian Child has undertaken in answering the potential of Superfonica and Afterglow, finding both a niche for themselves sound-wise that listeners can hear and readily identify, but pairing that with memorable and well-composed songs.
In essence, this is what Arcadian Child have been building toward for the last three-plus years, and as such it is all the more an injustice they can’t get out and support Protopsycho live, as it represents a special moment for the band. However, what’s perhaps most comforting in terms of listening to these songs and understanding their place in Arcadian Child‘s overarching progression is that there’s still plenty of forward potential on display. How might they move the impulses driving “Snakecharm” forward next time out? Or “Bitter Tea?” Or “Raising Fire?” What shifts might they undertake to continue to bring ideas from multiple sources together under their own banner, while also still pushing themselves on the root levels of performance and craft? As much as Protopsycho manifests Arcadian Child‘s mission up to this point, and achieves what seem to be its goals, it could just as easily be another step in their ongoing evolution.
Arcadian Child, Protopsycho (2020)
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Tags: Arcadian Child, Arcadian Child Protopsycho, Bitter Tea Records, Cyprus, Kozmik Artifactz, Limassol, Protopsycho, Ripple Music
