Wade Easy’s absorbing new album Honey Venom is a psych-rock success steeped in hypnotic guitars, meditative rhythms, and understated phrasing, drawing its atmosphere from a hazy strain of Appalachian psychedelia. His third album in under a year, the release moves through a sensual world where desire, devotion, bliss, and mortality gradually become intertwined, giving the songs an intimate and dreamlike character.
Sweltering guitar distortion and a debonair, smitten lead presence open the album on “Ey Mama.” “Ey mama, I like your face,” the lines let out with suavely understated charm, met by both steady underlying distortion and scorching twangs, moving with artfully sporadic placement. Its delectable slow-burning song structure is hypnotic and warming, reminiscent of Spiritualized. “Tomato” ensues with a balanced presence of shimmering guitar strums and forlorn twangs, as whispered phrasing opens with “I will write you a song today.” Lyrical expressions of giving one’s artistic soul and body to a beloved infuse well within this tonally consistent production, while “Hot Honey” arrives next with temptations to “come lay with me” as frolicking strums swell amidst a climactic combination of heartfelt twangs and pulsing percussion.
A more subdued spaciousness emanates throughout “Reverie,” memorably sparse in its rumbling percussion and atmospheric guitars, reflecting a nocturnal setting as the lyrics describe watching “the shadows dance along this cave.” Bluesy guitar ascensions appear intermittently, while other sections revel in the added rhythmic pit-pattering. Elsewhere, “Low” succeeds with more layered involvement, as effervescent strums, grimy jangling, and simmering distortion converge for a track fit for the open road, as the lead delivery delights in establishing the “I’m on the road” setting and confident nonchalance: “If the sun don’t shine / I really don’t mind.”
Another standout, “Venom” chugs along with compelling guitar-forward qualities, maintaining a consistent delivery with string-bending guitar occurrences adding to the poetic lyrical imagery. “The ash of dreams, in a sea of red, we smoke the leaves, with a heavy lead,” the delivery stirs, showing lovely intrigue in the descriptions of lingering dreams and shadow-inhabiting dusk. “Raw” then emerges with a psych-folk character, with caressing, slowed-down acoustics expanding to a beckoning to “close your eyes, free your mind.” The result is beautifully lethargic and hypnotic.
Album finale “Stung” arrives next, returning to the heavier distortion-embracing qualities of earlier tracks. “There’s truth in the sky, behind clouds of belief,” the lead delivery evolves into heavier second-half distortion, with accounts of dwindling sanity melding well with that escalated rock-ready vigor. Honey Venom is a stylish, patiently unfolding psych-rock success from Wade Easy.
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