Dream Syndicate - Psychedelic Flashes from the Underground

What would the Eighties have sounded like without an underground counterweight to the decade's countless commercial phenomena? But above all, how much poorer and sadder would the adolescence of so many kids born in the late Sixties and early Seventies have been, deprived of the furious screams of hope and rebellion from the many, often unsung, alternative bands of those years?
Among them, Dream Syndicate play a fundamental role from a historical standpoint (even more than a musical one), as the founding fathers of the movement — the so-called Paisley Underground — which made major labels clearly aware of the commercial potential of "certain" rock. At the same time, their universally acknowledged masterpiece (Medicine Show) isn't just one of the most important records produced in those years by an underground band, but also reaches peaks of intensity rarely matched even in the decades that followed.

Davis, California, early Eighties

Much like their contemporaries Thin White Rope (even more original and even less commercially fortunate), Dream Syndicate were born out of the atmosphere charged with cultural ferment of the university town of Davis, California. There, in 1978, Steve Wynn, Kendra Smith, Steve Suchill, Russ Tolman and Gavin Blair played together in the Suspects, a band that broke up after releasing an obscure 7-inch single titled "It's Up To You." Tolman and Blair would resurface in the more folk-leaning True West, while Wynn, meanwhile, moved to Los Angeles together with Smith, where he formed 15 Minutes and launched a record label, Down There. Before abruptly dissolving, the band cut the new-wave-flavored single "That's What You Always Say" for the label (later revisited in a different version on the Dream Syndicate's debut album), backed with "Last Chance For You." A drum machine ticking beneath a stern, anguished vocal on the A-side, and dark, Cure-meets-new-romantic atmospheres filling out a disappointing B-side. Then, finally, out of the meeting between Wynn and Smith with guitarist Karl Precoda and drummer Dennis Duck, the original nucleus of Dream Syndicate took shape in 1981.
The name comes from the title of the album "Outside The Dream Syndicate" that Tony Conrad recorded with Faust in 1972, which in turn evokes the nickname given to the experimental music ensemble Theatre of Eternal Music, formed by John Cale and LaMonte Young in New York in the early Sixties.
Beyond the name, though, there's nothing in common with the musical vision of Steve Wynn and co., which draws on the psychedelic revival of those years but avoids easy folk-rock references, drawing instead on the guitar fury of Neil Young with his trusty Crazy Horse and the cultured introspection of the Velvet Underground, drawing as much from Jim Morrison's narrative flow as from the primal power of the Stooges.
Wynn, a film and literature enthusiast, paints sonic canvases of human torment drawing on the smoky allure of noir and the intrigues of hard-boiled fiction, through a path of spiritual, almost mystical, elevation under the relentless lashes of razor-sharp guitars.
It's February 23, 1982 when the band officially makes its debut with a show at Hollywood's Club Lingerie. Shortly after, recording begins on their debut EP.

The Days of Wine and Roses

The Dream Syndicate (Enigma, 1982) contains four full-throttle tracks that marry punk's rhythm and energy with the acid guitar experimentation of Television, giving rise to dark, urban compositions that run counter to the bulk of the Paisley movement's more bucolic outlook.
"Sure Thing" has a classic Velvet Underground-style groove, complete with jingle-jangle guitars embroidering over a steady percussive bed, broken up by the march of the cymbals and a mumbled undertone that owes a lot to Lou Reed. That same classic sung/spoken delivery of the dissolute New Yorker also marks the mirroring closer "Some Kinda Itch," with its lightning-fast opening. In between, two tracks that would later be revisited for the full-length debut: a not-yet-convincing "That's What You Always Say" (already released as a 15 Minutes single, as mentioned above), with uncertain guitars propping up Wynn's subdued voice, and the noisy, creaking "When You Smile," with its abrupt instrumental shifts clashing with the softness of the chorus, which nonetheless never quite opens up the way it promises to.

The full-length debut, The Days Of Wine and Roses (Slash, 1982), is already a masterpiece thanks to a powerful rhythm section, Precoda's guitar feedback, and a finally convincing performance from Wynn, which together create moments of high dramatic tension.
The greater energy and self-assurance become clear when comparing the two tracks carried over from the debut EP: on "That's What You Always Say" the once-fledgling guitars have learned to speak the language of rock, and "When You Smile," from unfinished ugly duckling, turns into a swan of luminous beauty, with the vocal gliding in gently, without a hitch, over a light guitar bed of oblique charm.
The instrumental impact is as abrasive as sandpaper rubbed against rotting logs, and Wynn's voice is as sour as a vinegar-soaked sponge wrung out straight into the throat. The opening guitar solo of "Tell Me When It's Over" raises the curtain on a new era.
More punk than acid-rock, more rhythm and violence (Duck's drumming is especially energetic and powerful on the title track) than transcendental meditation, more Velvet than Quicksilver (here the debt is explicitly repaid through bassist Kendra Smith's hushed, dark, theatrical Nico-like delivery on the bluesy "Too Little, Too Late"), more Television than Jefferson Airplane. Just listen to the bouncing "Definitely Clean," a frantic rhythm driven by drums and guitar, or "Then She Remembers" — a Church-like opening with power tuned to the frequencies of Radio Birdman.
These sonic snapshots, lit up by the tight dialogue between Wynn's biting guitar and Precoda's feedback (a deja vu of that other great acid-rock duo, Kyser/Kunkel), are brought into perfect focus. The squire's wall of feedback indelibly stamps the DS symbol onto tracks like "Halloween," where an original solo built on harmonics and high notes leads to a fading, undefined, infinite ending…
The atmospheres paint scenes of urban claustrophobia and the nervous tensions of lost teenagers on the margins of the city. The overall impact, aided also by unhealthy lyrics dealing with alienation and manic crises, is as melodramatic as a black-and-white film from the Sixties. It's no coincidence, given Wynn's passion for Hollywood's golden-age cinema, that the album's title is drawn from Blake Edwards' film of the same name, an indictment of alcoholism starring Jack Lemmon. Wynn would later say that "almost all of everyday life is mundane, but at least 5% of it is made up of fear and panic, and it's precisely that creeping terror that lets us fully enjoy the peace of the rest of the time." His focus as a songwriter, therefore, would often zero in on that dark side of our psyche.
This is a record as raw and sincere as few others (credit also goes to the production by Chris D., the charismatic frontman of the Flesh Eaters), and in that sense a garage masterpiece tout court (even "Until Lately," which opens with a more refined, Pink Panther-like stealthy gait and jazzy atmospheres, reaches its climax thanks to a bouncing rhythm and sixties harmonica that sets up a tight dialogue with Precoda's feedback) — and for this reason it's regarded by many as even greater than the subsequent, more polished, Medicine Show.

Despite the critical acclaim, however, that same year Dream Syndicate suffered an unexpected blow with the departure of Kendra Smith, who formed Clay Allison before joining Opal alongside Dave Roback. She was replaced by Dave Provost of the Droogs.
The album and EP (along with some demos and the first, extremely rare 15 Minutes single) would be reissued together on Rhino's 2001 reissue.
Tell Me When It's Over, from 1983, is a transitional four-track EP (including the already-familiar "Tell Me When It's Over," "Some Kinda Itch" and "Sure Thing") worth remembering only for its rough-edged cover of Buffalo Springfield's "Mr. Soul."

A spectacular Medicine

Despite the bleak outlook, 1984 brought their second masterpiece, completely different from its predecessor right from its very premise.
While The Days Of Wine And Roses was a spontaneous, immediate record cut in just three days, a true indie-pendent product, Medicine Show (A&M, 1984), released by a major label like A&M, required five long months of grueling rehearsals and meticulous work on arrangements and sound. The deus ex machina behind the production is, surprisingly, the metal-world producer Sandy Pearlman, already known for manning the controls on the Clash's "Give 'Em Enough Rope" and for Blue Öyster Cult, a band the group held in high regard. As proof of this, Precoda would later name his future power trio Last Days Of May, in tribute to the ballad "Then Came The Last Days Of May," which appeared in '72 on Blue Öyster Cult's self-titled debut.
The sound is now more powerful and compact, with the vocals placed front and center. Without Kendra Smith, and with Dave Provost on board, the band changes course, making room for some notable additions: Stephen McCarthy and Sid Griffin of the Long Ryders on backing vocals, Gavin Blair of True West on counter-vocals, but above all, Tom Zvoncheck's piano, strongly championed by Pearlman and crucial in shaping the boundaries of this new musical direction.
The opening "Still Holding On To You" makes Wynn's intentions crystal clear right from the start. The acidic guitar intro and the closing sugary pop backing vocals represent the alpha and the omega, the past and the future — namely, the desire to reach a wider audience by starting from essential, foundational traits, but polishing them and folding them into a more accessible, more easily digestible context. That's on the musical side. The lyrics are another matter altogether: they make no compromises, sketching the outlines of a violent urban noir inspired by the leader's taste for crime fiction. It is, in fact, essentially a singer-songwriter's work steeped in epic storytelling, following the path blazed by Springsteen, but at the same time dark and pessimistic, laced with necrophilic urges, incestuous drives and brutal rapes that shatter romantic youthful dreams.
The backbone, for the first time, is made up of genuine "songs," archetypal compositions in which melody demands the spotlight, fills every space and, like the clocks in Dalí's paintings, stretches out into infinity, merging, going beyond mere spatiotemporal limits to settle into an "other" dimension. First and foremost, "Bullet With My Name On It," which, much like George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" or the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows," has an immortal chorus that echoes endlessly in your head. On top of that, the opening is as solemn as the Boss's "Backstreets," while the hallucinatory atmosphere of Old West gunslingers hopped up on anxiolytics makes it truly one of a kind. The album's overall mood, in fact, while describing a thoroughly urban hic et nunc, conjures up the dust of John Ford's wild trails; the "Medicine show" of the title was, after all, nothing more than a typical frontier huckster's performance.
Wynn and Precoda stage fiery guitar duels on par with those between Bruce Springsteen and Little Steven (a reference that's no accident, since Wynn would later say he found his sonic path upon seeing the Boss play the solo of "Candy's Room" on the '78 Darkness Tour), while Pearlman's production leaves a heavy mark on the oppressive hard rock of "The Medicine Show."
It's Zvoncheck, though, who deserves the greatest credit for shaping a sound that would remain inimitable. From the Bittan-esque piano intro of "Merritville" (with its liberating chorus) to the driving rhythm of "Armed With An Empty Gun," where Wynn's spoken vocal stirs up dark shadows hidden in the corners of back alleys.
A masterpiece within the masterpiece, the oppressive rhythm and the frenzied contortions, worthy of crazed Bulgarian dancers, of "John Coltrane Stereo Blues," a ten-handed composition (Kendra Smith included) that lays bare the frontman's passion for 50s-60s jazz and, above all, his fascination with the free, continuous creative flow of figures like Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis and (of course) John Coltrane.
A nearly perfect work, whose only compositional shortcomings — barely patched over with the help of throwaway backing vocals — can be found in the simple saloon-dance rhythm of "Daddy's Girl" or in the exasperated slowness of the spoken-word "Burn," which we'll later find reprised in far more dazzling form.

The band, around this time, opens for R.E.M. and U2 in concert, but the record still doesn't sell as expected. Precoda also throws in the towel, and A&M drops the band, even going so far as to pay out of pocket to get out of the contract. Wynn walks a tightrope in search of some glimmer of hope, but the Dream Syndicate adventure appears to come to an end in a sweltering summer of '84.
The split comes, however, only after the release of the live album This Is Not The New Dream Syndicate Album… Live! (A&M, 1984), which remained largely obscure at the time and was given new life when paired with its predecessor on the 2010 reissue. Just five highly energetic tracks (four from the latest album, notably "The Medicine Show" and "John Coltrane Stereo Blues") recorded live and broadcast at the time by Chicago's WXRT radio, enlivened by a maturity that redraws the sharper outlines of "Tell Me When It's Over" from the first album, with a classically styled piano intro from Zvoncheck that once again recalls the class and formal polish of Roy Bittan.
The lineup already features another bassist (the young Mark Walton) and, for the last time, Precoda's guitar, who, after an appearance with the supergroup Rainy Day, would go on to devote himself to his own project, Last Days of May, as already mentioned.
Precoda is, in truth, already a fading shadow, ceding the spotlight to Zvoncheck; the sound, indeed, is decidedly less guitar-driven and acidic, and more piano-based and interpretive. With positive results, especially on "The Medicine Show," with its ragtime flourishes and a solo split between rising and falling scales, and on the unbridled rockabilly of "Armed With An Empty Gun." But also negative ones. Without a doubt to be condemned is the flattening of "Bullet With My Name On It" into a light, limp version that sorely misses Precoda's six-string flourishes. The same goes for "Tell Me When It's Over," cleaner and tighter than the original but lacking its edge. Precoda's outlet comes entirely in the closing, never-ending "John Coltrane Stereo Blues," his final nine minutes of unrestrained guitar noodling.

Out of or into the gray?

In 1985 Steve Wynn released, alongside Dan Stuart of Green on Red (again for A&M), the album "The Lost Weekend" under the name Danny and Dusty.
The third album, Out Of The Grey, came out in 1986 on Big Time Records with a new lineup: alongside Wynn and Duck, Walton on bass and Paul B. Cutler (coming from punk outfits Vox Pop and 45 Grave) on lead guitar.
Cutler's style is decidedly more straightforward and less inventive than Precoda's free-form approach, and he carries that trait into the production as well, which he handles directly. The result is a lighter, more radio-friendly-sounding album, where instrumental digressions are deemed superfluous, if not downright harmful, and are therefore all but eliminated. It's yet another step in a trajectory that has seen DS move from post-punk to more muscular rock and now to a decidedly classicist strain of pop.
Wynn's pen also falls in line with this lower-key approach, bringing with it lyrics that feel less inspired. The shift in direction is clear right from the opening of the title track, wide open, airy, simplistic, with the first chorus betraying a desire to just relax at the mercy of melodies as light as clouds.
Echoes of Paisley are pale influences at best, as in "Forest For The Trees," with its dreamy opening and airy guitar lines, while in quite a few spots, like "Drinking Problem," the band settles wearily into the most generic country rock. "50 In A 25 Zone" is a bluesy track weighed down by a monotonous drum sound typical of the era and a tough, uninspired Cutler solo. The acoustic opening of "Blood Money" is deceptive, hinting at something good before revealing itself as a bland commercial product; nothing underneath the dress, to paraphrase a well-known film of the era. The qualitative low point of the band's entire career is reached with "Dancing Blind," an Eighties-style dance track made worse by an irritating AOR solo.
Still, there are also tracks that make the most of their lightness, like "Slide Away," with its deliciously carefree opening recalling the classic college-band soundtracks to teen movies, or "Dying Embers," which pairs an inspired opening guitar riff with an engaging pop hook; tender and fluttering, complete with Wynn's "la-la-la." "Now I Ride Alone," on the other hand, is a blues-inspired outlier, a dark urban tale complete with a final redemption that could be read as a holdover from Medicine Show or a preview of the next album.
"Boston" deserves a separate mention, a sprawling ballad with a guitar backdrop, the inevitable Eighties-signature synthesizer, and a chorus as artificially sweet as a diet soda, one we'll find again, completely transformed, on Live at Rajis. The carefree farewell is left to the swinging "You Can't Forget," which leaves behind a light, feather-light haze, much like the record as a whole.

50 In A 25 Zone is the resulting mini-LP, featuring five covers and one Steve Wynn original. The covers are surprising in their choice, placing Bob Dylan and Neil Young alongside Alice Cooper and Herb Alpert.

The ghosts reappear

A long pause for reflection, absolutely necessary after the disappointing recent efforts, places Dream Syndicate outside the sonic boundaries of the era.
Surprisingly, Wynn and company resurface in 1988 with what would remain their final studio album. Ghost Stories (Enigma, 1988) features Chris Cacavas of Green on Red on keyboards, accordion and backing vocals, and is the product of a clear-eyed effort to reach a wider audience — without sinking to the pop lows of Out Of The Grey, but evoking something of the atmosphere of their better days.
The path here runs, first and foremost, through the leader's rediscovered songwriting gift, as he crafts genuine musical short stories. Songs for everyone, very straightforward, but certainly more inspired and more solid than those on the previous album. In some ways, a comparison can be ventured with the songwriting work of Thin White Rope, namely "Sack Full Of Silver," although the final result still falls short.
Openings and choruses are the foundation nearly every track rests on. From the gripping opening of "The Side I'll Never Show" to the powerful, E Street Band-style intro of "Loving The Sinner, Hating The Sin." The latter is cleverly built around the feverish anticipation of the chorus itself, with the central guitar passages once again evoking the legendary duels between Bruce and Steve, while the chorus of "Black" feeds on powerful, epic imagery.
And then there's plenty of guitar, scrubbed clean of its acidic grime from the past and ushered into high society's banquet halls to accompany a voice that, likewise, has never sounded so clear and reassuring. A case in point is the full, gritty guitar — complete with a tight, judiciously reined-in hard solo — on "The Side I'll Never Show" itself.
A string of tracks grounded in the grammar of American rock, blues, folk and country help warm up the atmosphere a little: "My Old Haunts," a syncopated Marty Robbins-style midtempo ballad delivered like a Brechtian cabaret take on "Alabama Song"; a cover of 1920s bluesman Furry Lewis (already celebrated by Blind Lemon Jefferson), "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean," which adapts the classic call-and-response structure into a more accessible pop-rock idiom; and, above all, the pairing of "Whatever You Please"/"Weathered And Torn." Angels and demons. A strategic slow number worthy of a worldly entertainer, and a hoarse, distorted hard-boogie, set against each other within the span of a few minutes, just to make clear that beneath it all, the fire of passion still burns.
"Someplace Better Than This" stands alone in the DS catalogue, a nighttime serenade recited to a beloved girl, a Christmas carol for pure hearts suspended outside of time.
The lighter tracks are "I Have Faith," which drifts through the crisp Paisley air with Byrds-like jingle-jangle guitar work, and "When The Curtain Falls," a dispensable, dragging number that wearily stretches over the same guitar riff with a monotonous drumbeat and a tired vocal, before a solo worthy of the most shameless Gilmour, which loops back around with no outlet or way out.
The 2004 Restless/Rykodisc reissue includes eight interesting tracks recorded live for a radio broadcast on 89.9 KCRW on December 9, 1987, credited to a mysterious Steve Wynn Quartet and to DS with Chris Cacavas. An unusual (piano-and-flute) version of "Whatever You Please," a couple of unreleased tracks, covers (the saloon-style dance boogie of country singer Rodney Crowell's "I Ain't Living Long Like This," the bluesy "Spill The Wine" by Eric Burdon with War), and songs later revisited by Steve Wynn as a solo artist ("Carolyn," which brings to mind the carefree spirit of The La's "There She Goes," and "Never Ending Rain," stretched out in complete relaxation on West Coast beaches).
The live energy especially benefits "When The Curtain Falls," reprised in a grittier, more rhythmic, faster version, with "meaner" instrumentation and a biting performance. "If You Should Ever Need A Fool" is a midtempo ballad with Cacavas's organ weaving cinematic atmospheres, while "Darlin' They Know" breathes an intoxicating Celtic air, with fiddle and banjo leading the charge.

A Bang to Finish

Live At The Raji's (Enigma, 1989) is simply one of the greatest live albums of all time. The final testament of Dream Syndicate, released posthumously right after the band's split, is the epilogue that definitively seals the end of an era of illusions. Recorded on January 31, 1989 at the small Hollywood club Raji's shortly after the release of Ghost Stories, it draws democratically from the first three albums, leaving out that very last studio effort entirely. As a quartet, with no keyboards, Cutler's guitar (set against the leader's) finally finds its reason for being and bites harder than ever, managing for the first time not to make anyone miss Precoda. The eleven tracks gain fresh vitality and reveal distinctive qualities compared to the versions we already knew.
Following the setlist, "Still Holding On To You" is a great wall of guitars, sharper than the version on Medicine Show. On "Forest For The Trees" Dream Syndicate sound like the Cure possessed by hard-rock. Remarkable is the riff that punctuates the song's various moments, building toward the finale and locking into a loop that wraps itself around the listener, coiling like a snake around its prey until it's dizzying.
A wary start with bass and cymbals opens the intricate "Until Lately", where the vocal enters with timid restraint before giving way to an anxiety-inducing sequence of breaks and syncopations. The second half is a frenzy born from a fast, metallic Cutler solo that grows into Wynn's werewolf-like howls, as he screams, narrates, laughs, in a mad dialogue with Cutler's six strings. "That's What You Always Say", after a long introduction from Wynn, strikes with the usual wall of sound and an exhausting Cutler solo building toward the high notes. With "Burn", Cutler's customary solo finally turns more acidic and less metallic, while the ending is a quick crescendo, following the recurring Wynn/Cutler/Wynn pattern.
"Merritville" opens with a slow, acoustic, guitar-only intro and a gradual instrumental build that only reaches full bloom after four minutes. The chorus of "The Days Of Wine And Roses" is a kind of breathless tongue-twister lasting over 5 minutes before a sort of voodoo rite begins, officiated by Wynn's shamanic voice over Cutler's unsettling noise. The ending of "The Medicine Show" seems to fade slowly away with just voice and guitar, but instead surprises with a sudden restart under a hailstorm of notes.
In "Halloween" the standout is the middle section: a dark, pitch-soaked forest that disorients lost wanderers and annihilates them with destructive fury. As already mentioned, "Boston" is an entirely different beast compared to the version on Out Of The Grey, with the final sixty seconds standing as the most powerful thing Dream Syndicate ever produced. The grand finale is "John Coltrane Stereo Blues", a dreamlike delirium of over twelve minutes with Peter Case's harmonica substantially shaping the sound's quality, turning back the clock to the most psychedelic sixties, in a fiery dialogue with Cutler's distortions and a driving beat rhythm. When, after 8'40", the song returns to the minimal opening riff as if nothing happened, in fact everything possible (and perhaps even impossible) has happened, musically speaking. It's therefore fitting that the album's only special thanks goes precisely to Peter Case.
It's also fitting that the Dream Syndicate legend should be passed down through a work like this, since live improvisation has always been one of the cornerstones of Steve Wynn's approach to music. To quote his own words: "I try to capture a moment, to seize that split second where you don't know where the solo is going and you feel in danger every instant. That means capturing the exact moment at the exact time, and also the possibility of losing it all."

The 2004 double-CD reissue, retitled The Complete Live At Rajis (Restless/Rykodisc), presents the entire concert along with four additional tracks. The opening blues cover "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean", a "When You Smile" whose overall delivery is unsatisfying and rightly left off, the Dylan-esque "All Along The Watchtower" with an unusual ending that plays between softness and noise, and above all, an explosive version of "Tell Me When It's Over", inexplicably excluded from the album's original release.

The Days Before Wine And Roses (Normal, 1994), on the other hand, is an archaeological find of fundamental importance, certainly not for its sound quality but for fully understanding the journey from the band's free-form origins to the squared-off compositions of their maturity.
It's September 5, 1982, when in Los Angeles, at North Hollywood's Studio ZZZZ, Dream Syndicate — with an already legendary debut EP behind them and their first album still to come — perform a series of songs for California radio station KPFK.
Legend has it that every founding father of Paisley Underground flocked to that show, from Green on Red to Rain Parade, from the Bangles to Rem.
In any case, it's a documented fact that this dark, subtle, hypnotic style influenced the future work of those very bands. In particular, what's more evident here than ever is the essentially free and flowing inspiration behind the performance. A freedom rooted in jazz, born from Wynn's love for figures like Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane. And it's precisely Coltrane's spirit that burns in the fire of that "Open Hour", which two years later (renamed ad honorem) would become "Stereo Blues", the anthemic closer of every show.
The record as a whole, heard again years later, with its slow lingering over individual notes and its praise of silence, could almost be celebrated as an avant la lettre anticipation of slowcore. In particular, "Some Kinda Itch" is dark and acidic here, with the guitar free from the start to wander through the mind's darkest recesses; "That's What You Always Say" feeds on itself from a gentle start until it forms waves of musical energy that crash against the shoreline of the chorus, "When You Smile" is a pained lament, while the cover of Donovan's "Season Of The Witch" clouds the senses with a Low-like pace but, just when its strength seems to fade, it erupts into an infernal witches' sabbath. "Sure Thing" is a bittersweet result that ends in a ritual, liberating chant.
There's also room for two more singer-songwriter covers that fully capture Wynn's artistic personality: a very rhythmic "Mr. Soul" by Buffalo Springfield's Neil Young, which highlights their acid-folk side, and the Dylan-esque "Outlaw Blues", steeped in rock energy. "Open Hour" gives the guitars plenty of room to roam, free to intertwine and surrender to the oblivion of reason, reaching that ancestral dream-time where everything becomes possible and architectural and spiritual barriers cease to exist. The voice, freed by the guitars, refuses to fall silent. It's a constant call, a chase, an escape, a revolutionary reaction.
And then there's that "The Days Of Wine And Roses", which, although placed at the end, is actually a beginning. Of everything we've recounted so far.

It's Too Late To Stop Now… Isn't It? (Another Cowboy Recording, 1989), from the same year, is a sixteen-piece puzzle (hard to find today), made up of live tracks, demos, alternate versions and outtakes from the official albums. The list also includes covers of "Listen To The Lion" (Van Morrison) and "Cinnamon Girl" (Neil Young) from a 1987 live show, once again attesting to Wynn's mainstream rock and singer-songwriter passions.

3½; The Lost Tapes 1985-1988 (Atavistic Normal, 1993) dates back to the period of the final lineup, and its tracklist offers unreleased studio sessions, ranging from rock ballads ("The Best Years Of My Life") to singer-songwriter exercises and country tributes (the already-mentioned Rodney Crowell cover "I Ain't Living Long Like This").
At the end of this long adventure, Wynn would go solo, and his solo career would warrant its own dedicated study, more for the sheer volume than the quality of his output. Cutler, after working on obscure experimental productions, would join International Metal Supply, a Los Angeles instrumental outfit. Mark Walton would resurface with the Continental Drifters, alongside Vicki Peterson of the Bangles. Dennis Duck, by then nearing fifty, would reunite Human Hands, his first band. Precoda's work with The Last Days Of May has already been mentioned, as has Kendra Smith's, while Dave Provost's trail has gone cold.

Even though, going by Wynn's past statements, a band reunion seemed highly unlikely, 2012 brought a surprise. The leader decided to bring Dream Syndicate back together for the thirtieth anniversary of the album The Days Of Wine And Roses. Details are still scarce, but from what's known, the only confirmed dates so far are in Spain.

Five years on from that announcement, Wynn's Dream Syndicate have since played stages across half the world, and in the meantime put together new material. The new album How Did I Find Myself Here? (2017), nearly thirty years after the band's breakup, once again finds Wynn flanked by longtime drummer Dennis Duck, bassist Mark Walton, and a guitarist standing in for Paul Cutler, who had accompanied them through their final stretch: Jason Victor (who, incidentally, comes from Wynn's own Miracle 3).
This time the result is a revisionist affair. From tributes to fellow travelers Rem and U2, "Filter Me Through You" and "Glide", the four move on to explore the new psychedelic acts they've come to appreciate in the years since the breakup: the latter-day Mercury Rev (the long and somewhat listless "Kendra's Dream"), Jason Pierce ("Out Of My Head"), right up to A Place To Bury Strangers ("80 West", the most jolting track). There's still one of their own jams, though: the eleven-minute title track, a slow, toxic shuffle that runs through a number of guitar styles in a seesaw of searing refrains. It's not immune to the typical bombast of comeback records, with a slightly suspect overexcited tone, but it has all the right armor, the rough-hewn song form, and a production that holds it all together.

It was clear right away that How Did I Find Myself Here? wasn't an album dictated by the rampant nostalgia for certain psychedelic sounds, or by the revivalist craze of recent years. If Steve Wynn and company had come back after almost thirty years since their previous record, it was to mean business. The long, triumphant tour and "3X4" (a compilation in which Dream Syndicate, the Bangles, The Three O'Clock and Rain Parade — basically half the Paisley scene — cover each other) confirmed that feeling, so much so that the release of this "These Times" didn't surprise us. The energy, enthusiasm and inspiration on display up to that point were such that a comeback sophomore album was expected.
The sound of These Times (2019) is the one we all know. Scorching Paisley Underground, with the bass well up front and the guitars' fierce riffs always ready to stretch out into desert spirituality. But this time there's also a strong urge to get their hands dirty with plenty of psychedelic material from different sources: kraut, the New York of Velvet Underground, Wall Of Voodoo.
After a brief, sparkling intro with a sixties flavor, aptly titled "The Way In", it's immediately time for the journey's first psychotropic tear. First with "Put Some Miles On", an autobiography delivered à la Lou Reed over guitars that streak across the sky like comets. Then with "Black Light", a babel of desert rhythms, Native American chants and Tex-Mex banjo lines. Next come two ballads with a strong 80s aftertaste: "Bullet Holes" and "Still Here Now", the latter a shape-shifting track, first carried by piano, then pierced by a white-hot guitar solo straight out of "The Medicine Show". The album's reins are then loosened by the frantic rush of synthesizers on "Speedway", which crashes Stan Ridgway's instincts into Who-style backing vocals. "The Whole World Is Watching" is slow and alluring instead, driven by a bassline that, had Tarantino heard it, might well have ended up in "Once Upon A Time In Hollywood". "Space Age" drops the album's heaviest riff into outer space, where Wynn declaims like a shaman straight out of "Guardians Of The Galaxy", with the conviction and credibility you can only earn as an elder statesman of the psych scene. Far more spiritual and relaxed is the closer "Treading Water Underneath The Stars", where a growling bass gradually eases off to stroll alongside piano and elegiac, flowing guitars.
The sheer variety on offer makes the album feel less like a belated chapter in the Paisley saga and more like a work of total psychedelia, one in which you might find a less original moment here and there, but which is hard to skip even a single track of.

Presenting itself as a fluid, versatile psychedelic current, flowing from long studio jams of a bygone era, The Universe Inside is a total embrace of this absence of structure, a free form journey that rejects order and predetermination.
The only concession to Steve Wynn's past as a great songwriter comes in a few piercing lines delivered by the singer in his usual Reed-like cadence on "The Longing". But these are mere crumbs scattered within a non-song, meant to lure in the listeners most reluctant to fully surrender to the psychotropic experience, much like the backdrop of words running behind the astral textures of "Apropos Of Nothing", before the crew of old space rogues sets off on an interstellar chase along Hawkwind's coordinates.
Already released as a single, the track that opens the inner journey of The Universe Inside, "The Regulator", is a shocking departure from Dream Syndicate's usual standards and running times, a psychedelic monolith of over twenty minutes that scatters into space the hallucinated legacy of the Grateful Dead's long sessions and the jazz electric shocks of Miles Davis's "Bitches Brew" era. Dennis Duck and Mark Walton, the rhythmic engine of the outfit in both its incarnations, are tireless in charting a course through these psych-jazz constellations, swirling here, eternally spread out there ("The Slowest Rendition"). On "Dusting Off The Rust", sharp free jazz saxophones assist the rhythm section in the pneumatic work of stripping away rust, shifting the record from deep space to the old rusted engine of a convertible abandoned on some desolate New Mexico route.
Jason Victor, guitarist and key figure of the new Dream Syndicate, chases after Wynn's charges and the perfect psychedelic sound, the guitar scrape capable of dismantling the psyche's defense mechanisms. It's an experimental pursuit, yet deeply aware of and grateful toward tradition, as when he echoes a phrase from Hendrix's "Third Stone From The Sun", venturing into its darkest recesses ("Apropos Of Nothing").

The second life of Dream Syndicate keeps giving us surprises. The first one, on the new Ultraviolet Battle Hymns and True Confessions, is the handover from the “loose-reined” psychedelia of the previous "The Universe Inside" (ANTI-, 2020) to a more accessible songwriting style, perfectly embodied by the opening "Where I'll Stand", which in a way tames both the brilliance and the rougher edges found instead on the first two albums of this second phase of the band's career, "How Did I Find Myself Here?" (ANTI-, 2017) and "These Times" (ANTI- and Epitaph, 2019). One also gets the impression that Steve Wynn and his bandmates have found a balance beyond their most familiar influences – such as Velvet Underground, Byrds and Neu! – and have refreshed their sound by looking toward a younger generation, from Sonic Boom to War On Drugs.
Beyond the booming kraut-psychedelic surges of the previous excellent record, with Ultraviolet Battle Hymns and True Confessions the Californian band tries to return to a more conventional song form through quieter, rounder, more melodic tracks ("Damian"), looking to the canon of modern folk-rock songwriting set by Bob Dylan ("Lesson Number One") and Leonard Cohen ("My Lazy Mind"), as well as the indie pop-rock canon of Rem ("Trying To Get Over"). The tracklist swings, with a generally consistent feel, between reflective pop-rock songs ("The Chronicles Of You") and bittersweet folk ballads ("Hard To Say Goodbye"), with standout moments in the alchemy of psychedelia, rock and Californian pop found on "Everytime You Come Around" and the closing lysergic instrumental ride of "Straight Lines".

Contributions by Michele Saran ("How Did I Find Myself Here?"), Michele Corrado ("These Times", "The Universe Inside") and Maria Teresa Soldani ("Ultraviolet Battle Hymns and True Confessions")

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