left-field Garage-Psych-PowerPop-Surf, with a social conscience?
Timing is everything, they say. Of course, when you’re ahead of the curve, timing can also throw a wrench in the works. Given enough passage, however, and others eventually can catch up, absorb… even emulate.
Such is the case with self-proclaimed micro-legendary "weirdoz" The Prefab Messiahs. Originally together from 1981-1983, the art-damaged psych-pop collective played an array of basement and club shows. Armed with borrowed guitars, puny amps and a mission to confound the status quo, these Clark U. undergrads began a unique post-punk musical trajectory through the burgeoning “Wormtown” (Worcester, MA) underground. Aside from the 1983 cassette 'Flex Your Mind,' though, no recorded material was available from them until 1998’s 'Devolver' CD-R – an anthology of their recordings from the early ’80s. Several songs on the album were produced by their friend and outsider psychedelic singer-songwriter Bobb Trimble.
Fast-forward three decades later with the official remastered release of 'Devolver' via Burger Records, followed by two new well-received releases 'Keep Your Stupid Dreams Alive' (2015) and 'Psychsploitation Today' (2018)—and it seems the stars have finally aligned for the band. These three releases witnessed not only a new appreciation from a younger fan base, but also rave reviews from music press, who traced a lineage from The Prefab Messiahs to many of today’s garage-psych scuzz-pups, such as Thee Oh Sees, King Tuff, White Fence, Ty Segall, et al.
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