Daiana Feuer on October 3rd, 2018

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Psychic Temple‘s self-proclaimed cult leader Chris Schlarb has a true love for recording and collaborating. Last summer’s album, “Psychic Temple IV,” featured no less than Terry freaking Reed, Joni Mitchell bassist Max Bennett and Mick Rossi (Philip Glass Ensemble) alongside Nedelle Torrisi, Tabor Allen of Cherry Glazerr and Arlene Deradoorian (Dirty Projectors). The one before that, “III,” included Spooner Oldham (Neil Young, Bob Dylan), David Hood (J.J. Cale, Aretha Franklin), Mike Watt, Avi Buffalo, Elliot Bergman (Wild Belle, NOMO), Dave Easley (Brian Blade Fellowship) and many more. Schlarb clearly likes to stir up an alphabet soup of artists and styles.

His next project is a series of four collaborative EPs that will come out over the next few months and eventually form a Psychic Temple double-LP to be released by Joyful Noise in 2019. The first, “Houses of the Holy Vol. I,” was created with Cherry Glazerr. Though he has a recording studio in Long Beach, Schlarb took the band — Clementine Creevy, drummer Tabor Allen and Devin O’Brien (here playing the role of engineer) — along with bassist Davin Givhan and multi-instrumentalist Philip Glenn on a 24-hour recording trip to the desert.

In Schlarb’s words:

“It was the start of a humid Los Angeles summer when we packed up and headed for the desert. I booked us a place in Joshua Tree big enough for everyone to record in the same room. Clem, Tabor and I had been working on a group of songs for a couple months. A lot them started at the breakfast table in the sweet moment when the coffee is still warm, your stomach is full and the light is coming through the windows. We started recording around 2 a.m. on June 19, 2018, and cut two songs before going to bed. In the morning we took a dip in the pool, made a huge breakfast and dug into the next three tunes. The whole band recorded together: Clem and I on acoustic guitars, Tabor on drums, Davin Givhan on bass, and Phil on everything else. No headphones or click tracks. After dinner we broke out the whiskey and cut all of the vocals around a single microphone working out parts along the way. When Devin O’Brien gave us the nod, we moved on to the next song. An accordion overdub here, a guitar solo there. The clock struck midnight and we were done.”

The first taste is “Let Me Comb Your Hair,” a fuzzy easy-going tune that includes a creaking chair in its instrumentation while exploring the bonding experience of hair brushing and general value of caring for self and others.

||| Stream: “Let Me Comb Your Hair” or the whole EP via Bandcamp

||| Previously: “Dream Dictionary”