Ex-Prince Rama frontwoman Taraka Larson returns with her debut solo album, trading in digital exotica for freakout psych garage jams to excellent effect.
Prince Rama, also sometimes known as Prince Rama Of Ayodhya, encapsulate a certain particularly far-out strain of late 2000s / early 2010s psychedelia. Darlings of the blogosphere from the very start, they represented a unique moment when particularly weird music was breaking out and becoming mainstream — when eccentric artists like Ty Segall or Thee Oh Sees could become actual international superstars.
Over the span of eight albums and twelve years, Prince Rama traded in every form of psychedelic and indie music you can think of, transforming from the patchouli-burning underground psych warriors of their earliest work to delivering almost polished synth pop by the end.
Memorable melodies are available in abundance on Paradise Lost, which has more hooks than a bait and tackle shop. Catchiness is paired with experimentation and a truly weird, wild, wooly worldview that makes Taraka’s garage pop confessionals truly one of a kind. She manages to blend the best of all worlds — pairing the tightness, focus and economy of power pop, but with truly outre avant psych rock that would make Roky Erikson blush — like the faraway guitar leads of album opener “Once Again” or the tractor beam fadeout of “Deep Hollow”.
It seems like Taraka’s taken all the lessons learned in the last fifteen years of the indie underground and learned them by heart, truly creating the Best Of All Worlds. She takes the idiosyncratic singularity and late ’60s/early ’70s experimentation of Ty Segall and the relatively restrained, elegant minimalism of fellow garage revivalists like Vivian Girls with more modern, confessional acoustic punk like Frankie Cosmos, while ditching the sometimes cringey faux exotica that Prince Rama could sometimes fall prey to.
It’s a good look and a striking new sound that speaks to good things to come from Taraka.
-J Simpson-
