Purling Hiss – Water on Mars

If you haven’t heard yet, Philadelphia’s own PURLING HISS just dropped a brand new album called Water on Mars from Drag City. It’s the start of what sounds like a new era of Purling Hiss recordings, but they still somehow kept their past intact.

To keep things as simple and straightforward as possible, if you know where Purling Hiss began, this record is like a whole new world. Before this, no Purling Hiss material sounded anywhere near this clean or accessible, the closest (and still very far off) was probably the Lounge Lizards EP on Mexican Summer. Polizze and the gang have easily delivered us their most accomplished release to date, and we’re proud to be able to say we’re even from the same city where this acid-fueled psych-rock was born.

From its rollicking beginnings in “Lolita”, to the gazey, strung-out vibes in “She Calms Me Down”, to the frenzied, guitar-powered onslaught in “Face Down”, this record has it all. We’ve known for awhile now that nobody shreds quite like Polizze, and all 40 minutes of the album will speak for that again and again. Gone are Polizze’s barely intelligible vocals, replacing the previous idea that he really couldn’t sing with crystal-clear croons and heartfelt tales like “She Calms Me Down” or “Mary Bumble Bee”. Other highlights include the melodic, party-ready anthem “Rat Race,” where Polizze’s electrifying guitar licks almost double as a second voice in the memorable choruses.

The album hits its peak in seven-minute suite “Water on Mars”, offering up a straight 5-minute bombardment of careening, noise-fucked guitar squalls on top of a punchy and relentless wall-like rhythm section of throbbing bass and pounding drums. Polizze joins the mix in the final two minutes for a rewarding, fist-in-air anthem, revealing a timely, electrified guitar solo that will have you replaying this maddening track from its lethal beginnings. All in all, a track like this is the essence of Purling Hiss – loud, heavy, and right up in your face. That’s the way things have always been, which brings the mind the fact that there’s probably not another band who works harder or cares more than Purling Hiss.

If the songs below aren’t enough to satisfy, come out to the Water on Mars Record Release show on April 5th at Johnny Brenda’s in Philadelphia.

My Rating: SS
Genre/ Tags: Punk, Psychedelic, Alternative
Water on Mars LP: Tracklist:
1.) Lolita
2.) Mercury Retrograde
3.) Rat Race
4.) Dead Again
5.) She Calms Me Down
6.) Face Down
7.) The Harrowing Wind
8.) Water on Mars
9.) Mary Bumble Bee

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