Three is the third album from Flavor Crystals, the Minneapolis four-piece of Josh Richardson, Nat Stensland, Jon Menke, and Vince Caro, originally released in May 2012 and now getting the vinyl reissue it deserves.
The backstory matters here. Flavor Crystals had already built a quiet reputation in the psych underground through their debut On Plastic (2005) and Ambergris (2007), the latter recorded with Kramer, the producer behind Bongwater, Galaxie 500, Low, and a significant chunk of the American indie underground’s more psychedelically-inclined output. That association tells you something about where these guys were coming from.
Then in 2009, Brian Anton of the Brian Jonestown Massacre came calling. He’d clearly heard something he liked. Flavor Crystals spent 18 dates on the road with BJM, playing theatres and clubs across the country, absorbing that particular strain of relentless, chemically-enhanced psych devotion firsthand. When they got home, they went into full isolation mode, two years of continuous recording, spontaneous experiments, sprawling drones, the whole exploratory nine yards, and what came out the other end was Three.
The record sits at a particular and very comfortable intersection: the motorik pulse of krautrock, the narcotic shimmer of Spacemen 3 and Spiritualized, the wobbly dream logic of Mazzy Star, the fuzz-and-feedback density of the Black Angels. Richardson and Caro’s guitars spiral around each other in long, hypnotic patterns. The rhythm section locks into grooves that could run for twenty minutes without losing you, and sometimes they feel like they do. This is head music in the original sense: music that requires and rewards full attention, music that takes you somewhere if you let it.
What keeps Three from being just another drone record, and there are plenty of those, is the melodic core running underneath all that atmosphere. Richardson’s songwriting has a real gift for the kind of tune that floats to the surface slowly, the kind you’ve been hearing for two minutes before you realize you’re humming along. It recalls the best moments of the Brian Jonestown Massacre’s more introspective work, or the dream-pop end of the Spacemen 3 catalog. The warm production keeps everything from dissolving entirely, even as the textures shimmer and expand above it.
The two years of recording time show, and in the best possible way. Three doesn’t feel labored; it feels explored. Like a band that followed every interesting idea until it either became something worth keeping or taught them something about the next thing. This is a record made by four people who clearly love being inside the process of making music, and that feeling is completely audible.
The Minneapolis psych underground is one of those scenes that doesn’t get nearly enough credit outside its own city. Flavor Crystals have been one of its best-kept secrets for twenty years. Three is as good a place as any to find out why. Fans of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, Spiritualized, Spacemen 3, Mazzy Star, and the Black Angels should find this absolutely essential.
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