As noted on Volume 144 of the WOTT Music podcast, the latest release from Wax Mistress is the follow-up from February 2018’s excellent A Ghost in the Garden LP. While early 2018 may seem like forever ago in Internet time, it’s a particularly short time for a band to be able to write, record and release a batch of songs, especially when they’re as intricately layered as the contents of Hello Beautiful.

Within the span of four songs the band wastes no time showing off their ability to hop between the dreamy and the outright bursting. Quite intentionally, the album pays homage to a variety of different psychedelic styles. Here’s the album’s writeup, direct from the band:

A brief exploration of modern psychedelia. Verbed out soundscapes to garage driven energy. Contemplating the genre’s several emerging styles as well as paying homage to its past, and attempting to fuse them into one cohesive EP, Hello Beautiful is a love letter to psychedelia in all its different forms.

Paying homage can be a difficult task as you run the risk of feeling inauthentic or, even worse, entirely derivative. Fortunately, Wax Mistress clearly knows the subtleties of the genre as a whole and is able to transform those tenants into a collection that is immediately familiar yet still entirely their own.

In the age of skimming albums, you might be quick to judge the full-length Poems, Prayers, Stories, Songs, and Sayings from Ry Jennings as a Country album. There’s certainly a twang to his voice, as well as plenty of gently rolling acoustic guitars and lyrical tales of God and the Devil. However, if you allow yourself to pause and enjoy a few minor details, you’ll notice that there’s a whole lot more to this release than such an over simplification.

“Robot Cowboy” exemplifies this attention to detail as it manages to combine a space-age lead and narrative about an actual robot with a horse clomping percussion that couldn’t sound more like the Old West if it wanted to. This genuinely surprising combination of instrumentation happens consistently throughout the record. “Thank You (Jeff and Jeffrey)” hops along with a jaunty percussion and a swirling flute, “When I Die” delivers mandolin and a deathwish to go to hell and “Heavenly Father“, though instrumental, still manages to combine a western whistle with shockingly unnerving field recordings.

The more time you invest in Poems, Prayers, Stories, Songs, and Sayings the more you realize what a delightful potpourri of styles you’re dealing with. It sincerely embraces the basics of Folk and Country but expertly turns them on their head by integrating just about sound Jennings feels will tell his story best. If “Robot Cowboy” doesn’t hit your Best Of lists, it’s a sin.