Various – ‘This Can’t Be Today – A Trip Through the US Psychedelic Underground’ – Cherry Red
There’s a particular kind of compilation that arrives already carrying its own mythology, and ‘This Can’t Be Today’ is absolutely one of them. A 3CD sprawl promising to chart the American psychedelic underground from 1977 to 1988, it comes wrapped in the romance of college radio, patchouli, and the idea of a loose, nationwide guitar‑based resistance to MTV gloss and AOR bloat. The liner notes talk about a “big army” of bands united by Rickenbackers, fanzines, and a shared sense of being ignored by the mainstream. The marketing leans heavily on the Paisley Underground tag, a label that was never especially coherent even at the time, and one that becomes even more elastic once you start pulling at the tracklist.
But mythology and reality rarely line up neatly, and this compilation is no exception. It’s generous, occasionally lazy, often illuminating, sometimes too enamoured with jangle, and at its best when it wanders away from the obvious.
The first disc sets the tone with The Last’s ‘She Don’t Know Why I’m Here’, a bright, earnest slice of retro‑leaning jangle that feels like the default image of the Paisley Underground – whether or not that’s fair. Plasticland’s ‘Office Skills’ injects some much‑needed oddness, a reminder that the Midwest had its own strain of paisley‑injected garage that owed as much to humour and fuzz as to Byrdsian shimmer. But it doesn’t seem to really know where it’s going. What’s the goal? Who’s it for? What do you want people to feel? The Bangs (pre‑Bangles) show up with ‘Getting Out of Hand’, a wiry, sharp pop song that hints at the band they could have been if the majors hadn’t polished them to a sheen.
Chris Bell’s ‘I Am the Cosmos’ captures the confusion of the scene that was a stranger to itself, achingly beautiful, but tattered around the edges and happy to hide behind a rock. It anchors the set in the Big Star‑to‑college‑radio lineage that so many of these bands worshipped. The dB’s demo of “Nothing Is Wrong” is brittle and lovely, Green On Red’s “Death and Angels” brings some desert dust into the mix, always the murderer with a happy smile on their face. Sincerely paying homage to the 60s psychedelic scene are the likes of Tommy Keene‘s ‘Mr Roland’, a blousy-sleeved, echo-chambered track that reaches for the sky and tickles the clouds’ bottoms. Also successful is Al Bloch (brother of The Fastbacks‘ Kurt) – “I don’t know if I’ll ever live ’til 22“, he wails earnestly on ‘Hangin’ Around’, over a keyboard purchased for £3.99 and played by someone earning even less.
R.E.M.’s ‘Gardening at Night’ is another predictable but unavoidable inclusion, a canonical moment in the shift from punk‑adjacent murk to literate, chiming indie rock. The back half of the disc is where things get more interesting: R. Stevie Moore’s ‘I Go Into Your Mind’ is a Paisley Beat, a road trip where you leave the car in the drive; The Long Ryders’ ‘And She Rides’ adds some swagger and some celestial slide; Wire Train’s “Everything’s Turning Up Down Again” is a curveball, polished and almost new‑wave, and Darius and the Magnets close the disc with a charmingly off‑kilter slice of lost‑teen‑movie pop, realising the obvious error everyone had fallen victim to – they hadn’t added a sitar to their New Wave sound.
Disc Two is where the compilation starts to breathe. Rain Parade’s ‘This Can’t Be Today’ is pure shimmering, melancholy that justifies their reputation as one of the most genuinely psychedelic of the L.A. contingent. Plan 9’s ‘White Women’ follows with a 13th Floor Elevators stomp that only lacks a jug and a few more handfuls of pills. Redd Kross’s ‘Citadel’ is all the bratty, glam‑infused fun you’d expect from them. Already we’re seeing bands appear for the second time on this collection, though. Not only Rain Parade, but The Long Ryders, Plasticland and Dream Syndicate. It doesn’t exactly scream of a rich and varied scene.
The Bangles’ ‘The Real World’ is a reminder that they were a real band, not an MTV product, and well worth delving into their back catalogue. The Three O’Clock’s ‘Her Head’s Revolving’ is pure paisley pop – bright, sugary, and slightly insubstantial, though this is balanced nicely with The Pandoras, who have more urgency and rippling drums.
Then comes the run that defines the disc: Naked Prey’s ‘The Story Never Ends,’ Meat Puppets’ ‘Plateau’, and The Eyes of Mind’s ‘With You Again.’ Naked Prey bring a desert‑punk intensity that feels worlds away from the jangle kids, nearer to the chaos of Gun Club than anything else. Meat Puppets’ inclusion is understandable but frustrating – ‘Plateau’ is brilliant, but it’s also the most obvious choice, especially post‑Nirvana. It’s the kind of selection that makes the compilation feel like it’s reassuring the listener rather than challenging them. Still, it’s a reminder that psychedelia didn’t die in the ’70s.
The rest of the disc is a mix of solid obscurities and minor revelations. Yard Trauma’s ‘Must’ve Been Something I Took Last Night’has glimmers of excellence, and The Romans’ ‘Vicki Seventy’ closes things with a strange, cinematic shimmer, like the girlfriend of Beat Happening and Screaming Trees‘ ‘Polly Pereguin’.
Disc Three is where the compilation finally admits what it really is: not a Paisley Underground document, but a portrait of the broader American post‑punk/college‑radio underground. The United States of Existence open with a beguiling baroque‑pop curio, but immediately we run into trouble with 28th Day’s ’25 Pills’, bloated with gaseous nothingness with some echo effects. Dumptruck’s ‘Back Where I Belong’ at least has crooning guitar cutting through the slush but it’s the big guns who prove that you could poke your head above the battlements and try something a little different with spooking the horses. I remain immune to Hüsker Dü , but there’s no doubt they are several steps up the ladder, likewise with Flaming Lips. But it’s Thin White Rope and Camper van Beethoven who really wake you up, ugly children picking on the pixies in the forest, dual guitars, backward vocals and a cruelty that really adds a tension to the drifty melodies.
The Things, Flying Color, Winter Hours, and The Steppes deepen the sense of a national network rather than a single scene. The Green Pajamas’ ‘Kim the Waitress’ is dreamy and unsettling, one of the great stalker songs – “I’d like to pull her to me/Kiss her with no warning.” It’s really quite horrid but is masked by gentleness and a wingman sitar. Dead Moon’s ‘Graveyard’ is one of the comp’s most vital inclusions, raw, haunted, and utterly uncompromising. The Cynics and The Sneetches add melodic charm, and Ultra Vivid Scene’s ‘Mercy Seat’ closes things out with a track that is brilliant but, again, a little too familiar from recent comps.
And that’s the story of ‘This Can’t Be Today’: ambitious, generous, occasionally lazy, often illuminating, and sometimes too enamoured with the jangly, airy end of the spectrum. It wants to tell the story of a psychedelic revival, but what it really captures is something broader and more interesting – the moment when American underground musicians rediscovered the ’60s not as nostalgia, but as raw material. There are omissions (Screaming Trees being the most glaring, though SST’s licensing purgatory explains it). There are predictable choices and significant stretches where the shimmer becomes a thousand-yard stare at very little.
It’s not the definitive document of the Paisley Underground. It’s not even really about psychedelia. It’s a portrait of a generation of musicians who wanted to rewrite the history of rock from the margins, armed with Rickenbackers, fanzines, and a stubborn belief that the weird stuff mattered.
Daz Lawrence