Live Music Review: Mystic Braves, The Creation Factory and The Hijinks at The Bodega

Words: Laura Phillips
Wednesday 15 August 2018
reading time: min, words

Grab your paisley, velvet, suede and tassels, and get ready to take a trip back in time to the hazy, hedonistic age of psychedelia...

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Local Notts rock ’n’ rollers played their final show as The Hijinks on Saturday, supporting Los-Angeles kingpins of modern psychedelic-rock Mystic Braves, alongside LA rockers The Creation Factory. It was a perfect farewell to the group’s contribution to the Midlands’ psychedelic scene revival.

Coming with dreamy desert psych-rock – loud and raw, with catchy riffs and vocals drenched in reverb – this five-piece take you on a musical road trip through Dalí-esque desert plains. These guys will be missed from the Nottingham music scene, but you can catch them in a variety of other projects, including: Jimi Mack, Soft Girls & Boys Club, Sel Foundation and Sonderlust.

Exploding out of sixties San Francisco, acid-rock four-piece The Creation Factory look and sound as though they were established fifty years ago on vinyl. The band entered the stage with an injection of vintage passion for rocking and rolling, owning the stage with a laid-back nonchalance.

With musical influences that can be likened to Cream, The Kinks, and Wilson Pickett’s Mustang Sally, it’s no surprise that the energetic band has its captivated audience shaking along to every tune.

Psychedelia revivalists, Mystic Braves, somehow manage to put an entirely original spin on the West Coast psychedelic genre; although firmly rooted in the sixties, they’ve infused more contemporary influences into their sound, like Allah-Las and Night Beats.

Mystic Braves boast a catalogue of kaleidoscopic bangers that are borderline impossible not to move your hips to, evident from the reception their opening songs Desert Island and Mystic Rabbit receive as the crowd welcome them back to The Bodega’s stage. With no intention of dropping the tempo, the band plough through their set, testing out some new, soon-to-be-released (and eagerly awaited) material.

As The Braves come to the end of their set (much to the crowd’s dismay) they end with fan favourite Bright Blue Day Haze, ad-libbing to the max, and showing us what authentic psychedelia is all about.

Mystic Braves, The Creative Factory and The Hijinks played The Bodega, Nottingham, on Saturday 11 August 2018

Mystic Braves on Facebook

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