Hookworms - Pearl Mystic (Vinyl LP, CD)

Finally, it’s here! The record you’ve all been waiting for ever since that first EP/mini-album dropped on Sun Ark, Leeds’s very own Hookworms have their debut full-length LP ‘Pearl Mystic’ out on the ever-reliable Gringo. Recorded at his own Suburban Home studio by Hooklord MJ, the quintet have taken their time to craft an absolutely monumental debut album of crisp kraut grooves, wah-drenched guitars, sweet metronomic repeato bass licks, and Farfisa organ with MJ’s tape echo-drenched yelp sitting on top as the tracks swell and recede in a hypnotically grooving blur.

It’s pop music in a sense - certainly very accessible, with head-nodding rhythms and hooks which refuse to dislodge themselves from your mind after a couple of listens through a swirl of BJM-ish psychedelia run through with Spacemen 3’s trance-inducing focus and precision. However this does seem to be somewhat an album without a single, drifting between its lengthy songs with passages of churning drone and ambience from which the tracks emerge - it’s a complete listening experience, with the listener left in no doubt that it’s intended to be listened to as a whole rather than chopped into its component songs, which vary from anthemic call-and-response in ‘Form And Function’ to slow-drifting psych dreaminess in ‘In Our Time’ and ‘Since We Had Changed’, to the foot-stomping psych pulse of rocker ‘Preservation’ which alternates between tensely pulsating verses and an explosive chorus slathered in Headsy wah (oh, and there’s a cheeky ‘Coronation Street’ keyboard lick in the intro), before setting us down softly with the warmly affectionate but achingly sad musical farewell ‘What We Talk About’. To use a well-worn cliche, “it’s a musical journey”.

With krautrock and psychedelia being back on the ascendancy there’s been a bit of buzz around these lads in recent weeks, and it’s nice to feel like it’s happening to the people who deserve it for a change. Perhaps there’s a little bias here since living in Leeds I’ve pretty been following these lads from day one, but by anyone’s standards ‘Pearl Mystic' is an extraordinary piece of work, and sure to be remembered fondly for years to come. Of all these excellent young repeato indie combos doing the rounds right now - Cold Pumas, Mazes, Sauna Youth, Kogumaza, Mugstar, etc - this lot really do stand out as being something particularly special. If they were the Justice League, Hookworms would be The Flash.