Have You Heard the News? by The Mad Walls

Through the sixties and seventies, music mimicking the psychedelic experience boomed from the largest stages in the world, immersing fans into a larger-than-life demonstration of this unique side of life. However, all these years later those stages have found styles to broadcast, and psychedelia feels more comfortable in the modest, intimate space of Have You Heard the News? by The Mad Walls. Compositionally, introspective lyrics, intuitive structures, and swirling rhythms draw us into the speaker’s inner world, observing our surroundings in all of their typically disregarded psychedelic absurdity. However, a lo-fi production sensibility, intimate recording setting, and limited use of overdubbing combine to simultaneously provide us with an outside perspective, awakening us to the outward mundanity of the setting. While these musicians bond on an unparalleled level, opening a new avenue of experience that will permanently shatter their worldview, the outsider sees a group of friends accumulated on the floor of a garage, eyes darting around as speech arrives in hurried whispers of esoteric mantras. Both of these realities exist, and acknowledging them simultaneously helps integrate this far-off altered world with something more relevant to our everyday experience.