Art Di Furia’s Photon Band was one of the cornerstones of Psychedelphia, a loose coterie of Philly bands from the mid-to-late ’90s that explored landscapes both interior and interstellar in styles ranging from terse, Nuggets-style garage rock to extended abstract explorations. Whereas the last two Photon Band LPs were recorded essentially alone by Di Furia while he was doing coursework for a Ph.D. in Renaissance art history, fifth album Back Down To Earth returns to a full-band affair. It’s a heavy, bluesy, relatively upbeat collection of psychedelic rockers, appealingly nostalgic without being annoyingly derivative. It isn’t difficult to hear the roots here: Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, the Creation and a little MC5. But that’s fine. Whether it’s the woozy, floating title track, the cheerfully strutting “Whatchagonnado?” or the soulfully slurring “Just Between Me And You,” Di Furia and cohorts have ingested those roots and swirled them into their own rocking, clangorous trip. [www.empyreanrecords.com]
—Steve Klinge
