"Get By Get High"- Feathered Rhino

There’s little in the music of “Get By Get High” to support such a “psychedelic” title. On the opening track from Minneapolis folk-artist Feathered Rhino’s self-titled EP, an unnervingly ragged guitar figure emerges and lingers throughout. It doesn’t sound: detuned, out of tune, or off key. No it sounds like it’s on its last leg, like it will collapse at any second. If there’s any sort of psychedelic, it’s hidden in that haunting declaration.

And considering the weight Joseph Wilcox is putting on an already rickety frame, you’d forgive it for collapsing. Immediately Wilcox is croaking “by myself,” as though he’s been lonely for so long now all he can do is genuflect on his own isolation. What started as an attempt to “find my way” has turned into a slog to find any sort of connection. You can hear the desperation in that aforementioned croak, which winds through the rafters of an abandoned barn. At some point it gives up altogether and drifts off to sleep, where an unnamed affection’s “eyes are in my dreams at night,” as Wilcox puts it. Hidden in that haunting declaration is a tinge of psychedelia. Nothing lysergic or mind-expanding, instead the sort where you’re transfixed on a singular object. Time slows to a halt. Heavy-breathing kicks-in. The “high” shifts from physical to spiritual.

Feathered Rhino is available now on Bandcamp, courtesy of Kansas City label Petrified Records.