Acclaimed French psych band Slift returns to San Francisco
Celebrated French psychedelic power trio Slift comes back to San Francisco for the first time in two years, headlining the Great American Music Hall with fellow travelers Meatbodies Wednesday 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.
To fill the gap after the release of Ummon, the band partnered 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 in 2022 was bookended by festival appearances at Desert Daze in Southern California and a stop at Levitation in late October, with its first stop in San Francisco happening at Brick and Mortar Music Hall in the Mission.
That year also marked the band signing with Sub Pop, who released a 45 by the band that was followed with the group's third album Illion early in 2024. Another sprawling epic of a double album, the recording features more extended psychedelic exploration with seven of the eight songs clocking in at over eight minutes long. The album was met with wide acclaim and further expanded the trio's growing stateside following.
On Wednesday at the Great American Music Hall, they will be joined by LA garage-psych band Meatbodies. Leader and main songwriter Chad Ubovich was already involved in several projects when he started his own band in 2011. Having played in the group Thief with high school friend and future Wand leader Cory Hanson -- a band Ubovich later dismissed as "a pretty boy band...trying to be Radiohead" -- and a brief stint in punk group Pangea, the musician toured extensively playing bass and guitar with Mikal Cronin and Ty Segall (who Ubovich would also perform with in the band Fuzz starting in 2011).
Utilizing a variety of collaborators including Hanson, he began playing his own material at shows under the moniker Chad and the Meatbodies. With encouragement from Segall, he released a collection of tunes recorded in his bedroom bearing the same name on limited cassette through Segall's God? Records.
That tape led to In the Red Records signing Ubovich, who shortened the band's name to simply Meatbodies for its proper debut album in 2014. Featuring Segall playing drums and bass on some tracks, the record announced Ubovich to a wider audience as a crafty songwriter in his own right with its hooky blasts of propulsive psychedelic punk like "Mountain" and "Wahoo."
The musician managed to tour with the group despite his busy schedule with Cronin and Segall (both in his band and Fuzz), though Ubovich would not get to recording a follow-up effort until he put out the more ambitious concept album Alice in 2017. The effort also marked the first time Ubovich recorded with the touring line-up of Meatbodies with guitarist/singer Patrick Nolan, bassist Kevin Boog and drummer Erik Jiminez.
Facing burnout from his hectic touring schedule, Ubovich would withdraw from his creative endeavors and immerse himself in a nocturnal, drug-fueled lifestyle exploring the underbelly of Los Angeles. When he finally emerged sober, he started working on demos for Meatbodies' third album with drummer Dylan Fujioka (who played with LA prog-rock band Upsilon Acrux and gothic metal/industrial songstress Chelsea Wolfe). While he started production on Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom in 2019, technical issues at the studio led Ubovich to set the project aside before the pandemic brought the music industry to a standstill the following year.
The musician would eventually reconvene with Fujioka during post-COVID downtime to sift through the demos they recorded, putting together the stopgap recording 333 in 2021 and returning to the road with the current line-up of the band featuring Fujioka, guitarist/singer Casey Hansen and bassist Noah Guevara. The album's songs drifted down a hazy tributary that soaked Ubovich's melodies in flange and echo, pushing the band's sound in a more stripped-down, lo-fi direction.
After facing an unrelated health scare that left him hospitalized and being forced to move out of his home of eight years when it got condemned, the songwriter was eventually able to turn his focus back on the music he recorded for Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom. Finally released earlier this year, the album takes widescreen, stadium-sized approach to Ubovich's latest soaring psychedelic anthems, nodding to shoegaze and the early '90s sounds of Jane's Addiction and the Smashing Pumpkins for what may be his most hypnotic and accessible effort yet.
Slift with Meatbodies
Wednesday, Oct. 9, 8 p.m. $24-$29
Great American Music Hall
