White Heaven - Stange Bedfellow

First time re-press of White Heaven's highly coveted second LP, originally released via the legendary P.S.F in '93. You Isihara's unit hold an esteemed position in Japan's psych rock heritage, though strangely don't appear in Julian Cope's otherwise apparently definitive Japrock Sampler. An oversight or something else afoot? They don't quite have the transcendent qualities of a Les Rallizes Denudes or the full frontal assault of a band like High Rise, instead paying a little closer homage to their West Coast influences, at times sounding like a spacerock interpolation of - and bear with me here - The Doors. They're at their best when Isihara takes on various manifestations of James Osterberg, either appropriating a sneer as the band hit a Stooges-like Metallic KO or adoptin full Iggy-style croon on the Endless Sea inspired slow burners, Paper Beach and The Way We Were. The latter two tracks are in fact worth the admission alone, doing a terrible job of hiding the sadness inside White Heaven's otherwise sprawling scree. Rockist tropes just hit that little different outta Japan.