Invisible Hand is your favorite new band

“Don’t wait for your Third Eye, it’ll come when you’re least alive…”

Don’t Wait For Your Third Eye – Invisible Hand

The only reason I know what these guys are getting at in this song is because I like to party and socialize with people. One night, somewhere in the middle of this last decade, I was at this bash at The Viper Room and Joe Rogan was there, jabbering incessantly about DMT to several UFC fighters and West Hollywood strippers.

DMT is Dimethyltryptamine, which is produced in the pineal gland, or yer THIRD EYE. When you sleep, yer pineal gland releases tiny bits of Dimethyltryptamine, and then you dream crazy stuff like having sex with a horse who is smoking a Savinelli Horoscope pipe and wearing a top hat and a monocle (somehow), but it’s not really just a horse, its yer boss.

DMT is what makes dreams awesome, and Joe had been hanging out with some South American Indian tribe who’d been brewing DMT- producing teas since they discovered fire. Of course, Joe DIDN’T HAVE ANY with him that night, or if he did he wasn’t sharing.

When you die, supposedly yer pineal gland floods yer brain with DMT, and that’s when you see the loved ones who’ve passed on before you holding the tiny Baby Jesus or waving at you from the broad back of Ganesha or whatever fits the storyline you were raised with.

That’s exactly what this band from Charlottesville, VA is writing songs and singing about, and you know what? They’ve got eleven other songs besides that, all of which tower above 90 percent of everything else that’s “new” in rock (and roll), and 100 percent above all other debut elpeez released this year.

Adam Smith (the leader of Invisible Hand, not the 17th century Scottish philosopher/economist) makes this so. Smith has been forming bands since he was 14 years old, and this version of Invisible Hand, which has been together about four years, has all the right players in place: Adam Brock on drums (his hands and feet are always busy, and he sings), Jon Bray (the other half of Invisible Hands’ guitar attack, who also sings) and Thomas Dean, providing the bottom end bounce on bass. Each track is laced with auricular surprises — perfectly placed keyboard notes, spectacular arpeggios, daredevil vocal arrangements. They really thought this stuff through.

If you dig around The Web, you’ll find that the band Invisible Hand likes to be compared with most is The Kinks. Not a bad model for any band, and I’d say yeah, I can hear it, but I can think of more contemporary comparative models: As mentioned in the comic, the tricky vocal harmonics are similar to Denmark’s Figurines (yes, I said Sweden in the strip and normally I pride myself in my geographical knowledge, but I momentarily lapsed into “Geez, all bands north of Germany seem to be from Sweden” thinking, and it was too close to press time to change it) the nervous energy of Les Savy Fav, the gravity-defeating liftoff power of The Pixies , and the grace and beauty of (I’m just gonna say it…) The Wrens (umm, ditto).

This band, this record — they are worth your while. There is not one moment of laziness to be found here. The entire record rings true, which is more than I can say about my Joe Rogan story, which was completely made up bullshit.