Psychic Mess

Following a string of EP and 7" releases, San Francisco-based punk quartet Creative Adult unleashed their dark, aggressive energy in the longer format of their first full-length album, Psychic Mess. From their earliest recordings, the band's early goth influences always came through in a complex web with more contemporary reference points. Psychic Mess feels like a better-realized version of the band's weird mixture of Bauhaus or Joy Division-styled shadowy imagery and musical tension spun out through the nihilistic punk noise of bands like Pissed Jeans and Holograms. Tracks like the lurching "Charismatic Leader" take this hybrid into even noisier territory, with its uneasy flow of atmospheric guitars and jagged riffs recalling Confusion Is Sex-era Sonic Youth. The pulsing rhythm of "Flash" puts all of the previously mentioned influences through a post-punk dub filter, processing angsty hardcore drumming and guitar outbursts with the same hovering menace of PiL or the Pop Group. The ba