Staff pick of the week...
This week...Jim picks it!

Artist: Hip Whips Title: S/T Price: $10.25 CD	Tracks on this CD:
	I Need Your Love
	Stay With Me Forever
	Dwindlington Station
	Temple In Me Heart
	Honky Plone
	Lovers List
	Pickup Your Pain
	It's Obvious
	Find Out

Incredible debut from Scandinavian soul-pop-rock outfit Hip Whips, an organ-driven riot! Three lads from Stockholm who have apparently cracked opened some sort of Magic Portal to the late sixties, in a way so much more profound then even their peers, and Swedes are quite adept at this to begin with! Seven astounding songs (interspersed with a couple sweet, hazy interludes) run the gamut from pulse-racing rave-ups to eyelash-fluttering ballads to languid, luminous psychedelia… What propels The Hip Whips is The Holy Spirit of Rock ‘n’ Roll and Blue-Eyed Soul burning incandescently within the heart of mainman Markus Lindmark. Lindmark sings, possessed by phantoms of eras long past and kicks the Hammond organ-overdrive (actually a huge old wooden Korg) so hard you can hear the beast’s veneers creaking and wheezing. The rhythm section (bassist Thomas Meyer och Finn Strömberg on drums) swaggers or strolls, depending on whether the mood is all about ? And The Mysterians, or The Animals, or Nuggets boxset renaissance… The centerpiece here is “Stay With Me”, a gloriously melancholy Procol Harum-meets-Van Morrison vamp that leans on the retro vibes more than I thought possible, and I’m a sucker for blasts from the figurative past. And I’ve gotta say if Lindmark hasn’t channeled the seductive spirit of a trembling-hot, young Mick Jagger on “Pick Up Your Pain” I don’t know who has. But what really sets Hip Whips apart is the most loving homage to late sixties recording values (or lack thereof?) that I have ever heard, right down to the door of the vocal booth slamming shut at the end of the CD. Complete sonic saturation…in the very best way possible. It is such a freakin’ timewarp, it is so very very very 1967 that it does not even qualify as “retro”. A seance of classic rock, soul, and pop, a shimmering ephemeral Then spirited across dimensions on the path to planet Now…or maybe it's the other way around.