Acclaimed French psych band Slift plays first-ever SF show at Brick and Mortar
SAN FRANCISCO -- Celebrated French psychedelic power trio Slift pays its first visit to the Bay Area this weekend, headlining Brick and Mortar in San Francisco's Mission District on Sunday night.
French psych trio Slift has already earned a substantial European following with their first EP and album, but the group's sophomore release in the spring of 2020 Ummon found the band earning accolades from around the world.
Guitarist/singer Jean Fossat and his bass-playing brother Remi -- who grew up in a town in southwestern France, near the border with Spain in the shadow of the Pyrenees -- had played in punk bands together as teens, but it wasn't until after high school that they teamed with drummer Canek Flores and started exploring psychedelic sounds inspired by Jimi Hendrix.
After playing locally and establishing a following, the trio relocated to the town of Toulouse and began to develop it's high-energy, expansive style of psychedelic rock in earnest. Adopting the name Slift, the band released its debut EP Space Is the Key in 2017 and its first full-length album La Planète Inexplorée (which translates as "The Unexplored Planet") the following year.
That recording was mastered by noted producer/mixer and Detroit garage-rock icon Jim Diamond and at times recalled the muscular modern psychedelia made by Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees and their Australian counterparts King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard. The trio expanded its European following, touring extensively in France and Spain which establishing a reputation for explosive live performances.
In late February of 2020, Slift released its second album, a sprawling, double LP epic concept work entitled Ummon. The effort garnered the band its best reviews yet, but the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic derailed plans for extensive touring to promote the release, including its first trip to the U.S.
A live performance posted on the YouTube channel of famed Seattle radio station KEXP shortly after the album was issued has garnered nearly 1.3 million views to date and helped introduce the band's kinetic psych sound to a global audience while they bided their time through COVID restrictions and rise of new variants.
While Slift was forced to mostly stay home for much of 2020 (though they did manage a couple of concerts under COVID-19 safety protocols), the band has stayed busy. In addition to working on new material, Slift reissued its first EP and album in a special gatefold vinyl version that quickly sold out and started planning its next moves once pandemic precautions become a thing of the past.
Though the band has yet to release any new studio material since Ummon, they did partner with the Austin, TX-based psych festival Levitation to release the live Levitation Sessions double album and video that leaned heavily on material from their last effort. The band's first-ever U.S. tour is bookended by festival appearances at Desert Daze in Southern California this weekend and a stop at Levitation in late October, but they will come to San Francisco for the first time Sunday night, playing Brick and Mortar Music Hall in the Mission.
On Sunday, they will be joined by LA-based psych-meets-metal trio Zig Zags. Founded by guitarist/vocalist Jed Maheu and drummer Bobby Martin in 2010, Zig Zags took their name not from the popular cigarette rolling papers, but a cheap brand of shoes both musicians wore regularly. Initially playing as a duo, Zig Zags would eventually bring on friend and fan Patrick McCarthy to play bass as the band started churning out a series of caustic, fuzzed-out 7-inch singles for a variety of labels.
The band established itself enough on the Los Angeles scene to be tabbed to back punk legend Iggy Pop on a new version of the Betty Davis funk anthem "If I'm In Luck I Might Get Picked Up" for Light in the Attic Records in 2014. By the time Zig Zags released their proper debut album recorded by garage-punk stalwart Ty Segall for In the Red Records a few months later, it was clear the band was injecting more of a riff-heavy Black Sabbath influence into their original style of chaotic, tuneful punk.
Maheu would be the sole remaining original member of Zig Zags when they re-emerged two years later with their sophomore album, Running out of Red. Released on John Dwyer's Castle Face Records, the band (now rounded out by bassist Caleb Miller and drummer Dane Arnold) channeled the raw sounds of Venom and early Slayer through a punk prism in a way that echoed mid-1990s Kentucky-based true believers the Hookers.
On the band's latest album -- and first for noted psych/stoner/metal imprint Easy Rider Records -- the trio went full-blown thrash. The ferocious tunes from 2019's They'll Never Take Us Alive like opening salvo "Punk F--king Metal" and "Killer of Killers" sound like Ride the Lightning-era Metallica bashing out new song ideas in their old El Cerrito garage, but Zig Zags still manage to stay true to their punk roots.
Slift with Zig Zags
Sunday, Oct. 2, 8 p.m. $20-$25
Brick and Mortar Music Hall