ALBUM REVIEW: Joel Timmons’ Debut Solo Album, ‘Psychedelic Surf Country’ Offers a Musical Kaleidoscope of his World
Henry Carrigan
Posted On February 5, 2025
By turns hauntingly-atmospheric and raucous, Joel Timmons’ debut solo album Psychedelic Surf Country lives up to its name, swerving from layers of head-tripping synthesizer symphonies to Dick Dale guitar boogies.
“Just a Man,” a story song that’s an ode to Timmons’ father opens with a cascade of synths and keys before settling into percolating rhythms with sonic echoes of the Marshall Tucker Band’s “Fire on the Mountain.” The frantic fiddling of Charlie Daniels’ “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” meets the elegiac beauty of the fiddling on It’s a Beautiful Day’s “White Bird” in Jason Carter’s fiddling on the song’s instrumental bridge.
The straight-ahead rocker, “Turbo,” is a riotous road song that features B3 and guitars chasing each other down the highway, with phrases from Johnny Rivers’ “Secret Agent Man” embedded in the Chuck Berry-like musical delivery. Strolling guitars and lilting pedal steel licks lie under the sauntering country and western homage to the power of home in “Cottage by the Sea.” And sparkling pedal steel runs and Timmons’ and his harmony vocalists’ yodeling combine to create a loping country twirler, “East Nashville Cowboy,” that winks at the country music hipster scene in East Nashville. “End of the Empire” builds slowly from a sedate, almost melancholy, chamber rock piece and spirals into an anthemic chorus of voices riding over screaming guitars, evoking the emptiness and desolation of a post-apocalyptic world.
Timmons has already built a following both with his long-time band Sol Driven Train and in his collaborations with Maya de Vitry, who produced this album. But his debut solo album, Psychedelic Surf Country welcomes listeners into the kaleidoscopic musical landscape of Timmons’ world.
Joel Timmons Psychedelic Surf Country is out February 7.
