Haight-Ashbury - She's So Groovy '86

 #Haight-Ashbury #psychedelic rock #psychedelic folk #folk rock #acid folk #neo-psychedelia #flower power #retro-San Francisco sound #sunshine pop #Scottish #music video

Choosing such a loaded name is willful. Scottish trio Haight-Ashbury are going to be identified with psychedelic-era San Francisco whatever they do. Should they wish to extend their musical wings, diversions into drum and bass or metal aren’t going to be easily accommodated. It's just as well then that Haight-Ashbury are top-drawer practitioners of a terrifically attractive dark psychedelia. Their second album (released under the name Haight-Ashbury 2, but they still trade as Haight-Ashbury too) opens with hand percussion, a jangling sitar and a keening, modal vocal line. Rhythm is Mo Tucker simple and repetition hypnotises. The raw production emphasises Haight-Ashbury’s edginess. As does a leaning towards the moodiness of Mazzy Star and their obvious familiarity with The Jesus & Mary Chain and The Incredible String Band. This version of the psychedelic dream will make flowers wilt. Second track “Sophomore” describes giving the kiss of life. Haight-Ashbury are singing of those around them being close to death. Quoting Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” on the jangling and tuneful “Everything is Possible” brings some levity. There’s some hope for peace and love. This extraordinary album hasn't quite come from the blue. Theartsdesk saw Haight-Ashbury at the end of last year at France’s Trans Musicales festival and summed them up as “folk harmonies with a raga guitar and shoegazing dissonance”. The Ashburys does nothing to alter that, but it does confirm that Haight-Ashbury are very special.  From: https://theartsdesk.com/node/35096/view

Of course Haight-Ashbury aren’t actually from San Francisco, but it’d be more than reasonable to assume that their second album opener, ‘Maastricht - A Treaty’, was recorded live amongst the longhairs in Golden Gate Park. Lifting the patchouli oil-drenched essence of far-out musical Hair, the song unfolds as a somewhat directionless exposition of tremulous sitar while, just in the corner of your vision, a kaftan-clad Dennis Hopper does the Watusi with George Harrison. If this whole album were similarly stoned and meandering, we might take umbrage; but mercifully it’s a one-off. In fact, as a lesson in vivid scene setting, it works a treat.
Coming from Scotland rather than California, Haight-Ashbury are Kirsty Reid, Jennifer Thompson and Kirsty’s brother Scott on drums. Haight-Ashbury 2: The Ashburys follows the trio’s 2010 debut, and though it might be heavily indebted to counter-cultural, tie-dyed grooves, this isn’t just a spun-out, swinging 60s tribute from some half-baked merry pranksters. ‘Sophomore’ brings to mind those other harmonising hippies of the moment, Haim; but like those So-Cal sisters, it adds a healthy, brusque dose of a gutsy power-pop into the bargain. Tough like Pat Benatar but heartfelt and absorbed with female experience like Stevie Nicks, its heavy guitars and heavenly vocals also recall graceful grunge virtuosos The Breeders and Veruca Salt. It is, quite frankly, a blinder of a song. These Glaswegians don’t spend the whole record stateside stargazing though. They skip the same, lavender-studded path as Smoke Fairies on the eerie 2nd Hand Rose, looking to British folk of the 1970s, of Fairport Convention, with ring-a-roses, Wicker Man vocals and a stomping glam-goth breakdown.  From: https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/25pn/

Haight-Ashbury - Sepia Song

 #Haight-Ashbury #psychedelic rock #psychedelic folk #folk rock #acid folk #neo-psychedelia #flower power #retro-San Francisco sound #sunshine pop #Scottish

Without getting hairy and naked and giving out LSD-drenched bandanas and Timothy Leary pamphlets at every gig, Haight-Ashbury couldn’t wear their influences more clearly on their kaftan sleeves. Though Jen Thomson and siblings Kirsty and Scott Reid hail from Glasgow, they pine for San Francisco 1968 and pay faithful homage to the era with their melodic, psychedelic folk rock - complete with more sitars and tambourines than a Hare Krishna recruitment drive - that’s been liberally dunked in more modern psych stews. Think Fairport Convention, Harrison’s solo work or The Incredible String Band having a love-in with The Jesus & Mary Chain, Mazzy Star, Kyuss and MGMT. On acid? Obviously. Duh. Their previous two albums - 2010’s Here In The Golden Rays and 2012’s Haight-Ashbury 2: The Ashburys - have been so authentic as to lose their grip on their pop edge and drift into the odd indulgent cosmic meander at points. But the comforting fuzz-hugs of their third retain a firm melodic focus, recalling more modern waft-pop acts like Haim and School Of Seven Bells, through the Dear Prudence chug of Family, the gang chanting Velvets pastiche Kicks and the Fleetwood Maharishi pop of Blow Your Mind. Their dark psychedelia just got all the more enthralling. Be sure to wear some hogweed in your hair.  From: https://www.loudersound.com/reviews/haight-ashbury-perhaps

Haight-Ashbury - Blow Your Mind

 #Haight-Ashbury #psychedelic rock #psychedelic folk #folk rock #acid folk #neo-psychedelia #retro-1960s  #Scottish

The Glasgow trio Haight-Ashbury has quite possibly never sniffed a single whiff of proper incense-scented San Francisco air. But my, have they imbibed the spirit! Theirs is a huge wall of sound, consisting of twanging tablas and rattling tambourines, the ethereal twin vocals of Jennifer Ashbury and Kirsty Heather Ashbury (possibly not their real names) and a serious addiction to Jesus & Mary Chain-type guitar textures. Huge fun.  From: https://julietippex.com/roster/haight-ashbury

 Haight-Ashbury are a trio, like Peter Paul and Mary, Crosby Stills and Nash and Motorhead (when they were good). Haight-Ashbury don't necessarily sound like any of them, though. They play beautiful West Coast sunshine pop, full of the sort of close harmonies and sweeping melodies that, when it all comes together, make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. Listening to their borderline-kosmische neo-hippie pop, you may imagine that they formed when the moon was in the seventh house and Jupiter aligned with Mars, with the intention to herald the Age of Aquarius. That isn't necessarily untrue. What definitely did happen was that best friends Kirsty and Jen were in bands together from their late teens. One night they had a gig at Glasgow University and the rest of the musicians couldn't make it, so Kirsty’s brother, Scott sat in on guitar while the girls sang. It was a great show. They formed a band.
“We did a Bangles cover. My favourite guitarist was Stephen Stills and that's what I wanted to sound like, nice open tunings, close harmonies,” says Scott. Scott had travelled that summer with a friend in America. “We spent a while specifically in San Francisco. I knew that a few of the bands I liked had roots there. I bought the first Jefferson Airplane album, and The Grateful Dead's records. When we came back wearing Haight Ashbury t-shirts, it was just one of the names in our heads. We didn't choose it because that was our sound, though our sound eventually came to be that. As we developed, we fell into that mold easier than we thought we would.”  From: https://www.a38.hu/en/artist/haight-ashbury