Simeon Soul Charger "Harmony Square"

 

Read about this band on some German music site and was very surprised they were American, based in northeast Ohio.  The story is that a couple of Germans on vacation in NYC saw them live and were so blown away that they changed their flight to stay and see the band again.  For the next year, the tourists tried to convince the band to come to Germany.  Finally giving in, they arranged a two-week tour and everything started to click.  They've played many more times over there since and developed quite a fan base in Europe.  As you should be able to tell from the cover art, they are into "psychedelicrock."  This is how they describe "Harmony Square" on their website:
   
"An elaborate story about an alien circus descending on Earth to offer transcendence to a sea of oppressed humans." 

Thar's some chemicals in them thar brains...



Man, I hear LOTS of Crack The Sky in the first single.  Other artists that I hear hints of are Bubble Puppy, Blitzen Trapper, Beatles (blue years), Queen, City Boy and the singer from Klaatu.  I actually hit on three or four of their listed influences published on their Facebook page.  These are the others:
"David Bowie, Pink Floyd, The Kinks, Davis Lynch, Jethro Tull, Jimi Hendrix, Stanley Kubrick, Existentialism, Led Zeppelin, The Universe, Mahavishnu Orchestra, The Violent Femmes, Can, Dr. Suess, Ingmar Bergman, Shel Silverstein, The Residents, King Crimson, The Decemberists, Leonard Cohen, Robert Anton Wilson, Queens of the Stone Age, Dreams, Radiohead, Muse, Time, Terrence McKenna, Primus, Black Sabbath, Rage Against the Machine, TRex, The Animal Collective, Of Montreal, Grizzly Bear, Velvet Underground, Them Crooked Vultures, Tom Waits."
I omitted a couple of which I had no clue who/what they were...and I could have dumped a few more, but I wanted you to have the opportunity to giggle.  One more video from their YT channel...



I love things like this.  On the downside, however, it's a 67-minute rock opera in one continuous track that is broken into fifteen pieces and it gets monotonous about a third of the way in.  I will keep about twenty-five minutes of it and that should be plenty.