Beautify Junkyards

Always a bit shrouded in layers of dense psychedelic fog, the world of Beautify Junkayrds expands with a new LP for the ever-impressive Ghost Box Records. The latest album plunges the band back into the mists once more, slipping through progressive folk, Library Music, psych-pop, and the kind of Radiophonic ripples sent out into the ether from Broadcast. Nova finds the band just where they left off on Cosmorama, creating cinematic wonders that swim through the murk. Each song reaching out to the listener like a cellophane ensconced beacon pulsing through aqueous tones. Perhaps, if there’s a song title that accurately surmises the works on Nova, it’s “Here Everything Is Still Floating.” That’s how the record feels, suspended in liquid and bobbing us up and down its hypnotic sway.

The band enlists some notable names to help them realize their wetland wonder as well. Paul Weller co-writes and sings on the haunting “Sister Moon” while psych legend Dorothy Moskowitz (The United States of America) does the same for album closer “Turn The Tide.” Ghost Box labelmate Jesse Chandler (Pneumatic Tubes, Midlake, Mercury Rev) adds flute to the record amping up those Library vibes. The Ghost Box corner of the psych-pop world always seems like a coven unto its own, and few exemplify that sound better than Beautify Junkyards, a band that captures the densely layered, kaleidoscopic pulse that emanates from its artists. Nova is peak Ghost Box, an album that bends the bucolic, the beautiful, and the hauntological into an immersive experience.