Psymon Spine might sound like the name of a barely above-the-radar grunge band who somehow had a Billboard-charting single in 1992 before dissolving while on tour to promote their debut album— likely citing "creative differences" (read. coke and delusions of grandeur). However, if you are looking for their sophomore album Charismatic Megafauna in the rock section of your local record store's second-hand racks, your seemingly out of luck. For several reasons, really. Chief among them being the fact that Charismatic Megafauna is really good, and people who get their hands on a copy are going to be unlikely to want to give it up. But also, it's not that old of an album, having dropped in February of this year, and further, it's an album thorough saturated sweat and seedy-glamour of the neon-flooded, disco-dives of NYC's mid-70's.
Many of the sounds that Psymon Spine extracts beats and rhythms from in order to fill out the managery of wild, dangerous and danceable jams on their latest record, also happened to infuse early Sugar Hill Gang hits with their distinctive character and would eventually be diverted to power '90s house and techno. This is especially true of the bouncy wrinkle of the echo-wrapped "Modmed," and the rubber-synthed snap-back "Jacket." Other tracks fuel up to take you on a motorik mood smoother like closer "Unwound," while still others, like "Channels," simply go full-on Chic, exploding into star-shaking shouts and glittery grooves, presented with a sticky undercoat of LCD Soundsystem to juice up the vocals and rhythm with a punk edge. The absolute highlight though, is the dodgy, city-dweller anthem and "Rapture" resurrector "Jump Rope," with its splashy, leaping beats, bumpy-funk bass-lines, back-talking guitars, and spiral-descent vocal progression, sounding like a grown-up Chandra Oppenheim intoning the parrels of the big city while backed by Mother's Finest, freshly returned from a round trip to Mars.
As far as late-20th century dance revival records go, I'm hard-pressed to find many as charming as the beast that Psymon Spine has unleashed on Charismatic Megafauna
