Cliffs
Experiments EP
Self-Released
Street: 10.04.12
Cliffs = (MGMT + Panda Bear) x Saucerful of Secrets -era Pink Floyd
The flower-child’s bouquet of influences on Experiments touches on many psychedelic front-runners of the past as well as a bevy of acid-trip contemporaries. “Marigold” features trippy keys and clean, reverb-laden guitars with dreamy, distant vocals and has an almost Simon & Garfunkel taste to it, while “A Strange Love” has a Peter Bjorn and John quality with stimulating keyboards and simple-but-catchy guitar licks. Cliffs have put together a great, very listenable EP (it made it into my regular listening cycle) with catchy riffs, warm vocals, and some sunny surf tunes, but they travel down too many well-worn paths. Psychedelic and ’60s-inspired music is about pushing boundaries, but, ironically, Cliffs don’t really delve into new space on Experiments . The combination of influences give Cliffs a sound all their own, but a nice acid trip would take them to new places, and though it sounds pretty good, some more production polish wouldn’t hurt. –CJ Morgan