Album Review: Invisible Eyes – Searching For Crows

Invisible Eyes have today released their debut album Searching For Crows, the emphasis on their first full length never settles and continually shifts, at one point it’s a stamping dark and growling creature that resembles a primitive Killing Joke, the next it’s diving into the more experimental hallucinogenic side of their nature., something that sits somewhere between Gaye Bykers On Acid and the epic space rock of Hawkwind and Ozric Tentacles epic jams. The disparate elements are all fused together into a soundtrack that pretty much defies description, beyond dropping a few of more the off kilter names that I would guess sit amongst the band’s sprawling record collections.

Searching For Crows has the organic feel of an unadulterated live album rather than a studio release, as it was recorded in one frantic day this is exactly what Invisible Eyes have delivered. Searching For Crows is essentially a selection of highlights from an extended jam session, the twelve tracks were each jammed twice with the three members all playing in the same compact studio so the competing elements all bleed into each other. There are no overdubs in sight and none of the more usual studio polishes are employed, other than removing the buzzing plastic covers from the strip lights, and the end result is that this is a mindwarping fifty minutes that has the feel of an intoxicated and intimate live show.

Searching For Crows is one of those albums that refuses to be pigeonholed, it possesses a unique combination of garage, psychedelia, post punk and alternative influences, the closest I can come is that it has the feel of a stripped back incarnation of The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster, one that is accelerating towards the event horizon of an intense, dark and nightmarish lysergic trip. Searching For Crows is appropriately enough being released via Psychic Ambulance, as I suspect that’s what you would need after heading too far down this particular rabbit hole.

Searching For Crows can be streamed and purchased via Bandcamp here

Invisible Eyes can be found on Facebook,