Acid Smoothie melds Fuzz & Existentialism on ferocious new LP, "Faxing the Vatican"
Acid Smoothie’s Faxing the Vatican is a chaotic, glorious mess in the best possible way — a psychedelic rock record that feels like it was transmitted through a broken cassette deck from some alternate dimension where vintage fuzz pedals reign supreme. On their second full-length, the enigmatic multi-instrumentalist Paul Dunne fully leans into the heavy, lo-fi aesthetic that made Acid Smoothie’s a standout, but this time with sharper hooks, deeper grooves, and a sharper sense of purpose.
Across its compact but blistering 30-minute runtime, Faxing the Vatican is an unrelenting flood of distortion-soaked guitar riffs, pounding drums, and conversational, almost mumbled vocals that seem less sung than shouted across a sticky dive bar floor at 2 a.m. It’s messy, it’s raw, and it’s absolutely alive. Where some modern psych-rock acts polish their edges for playlist placement, Dunne relishes the grit. The record sounds like it was made to be played too loud through blown-out speakers.
Dunne uses the imagery of obsolete machinery — fax machines, landlines, dusty VHS tapes — as a metaphor for the outmoded parts of ourselves we cling to out of stubborn nostalgia or quiet fear. It’s heady stuff, but it never feels pretentious. Instead, the lyrics tumble out in a stream-of-consciousness cadence, more concerned with mood and momentum than crystal clarity. The result is music that feels incredibly intimate even when it’s operating at full throttle.
The production, recorded and mixed entirely in Dunne’s bedroom studio, captures that balance perfectly. Every track hums with the kind of anarchic livewire energy you’d expect from a sweaty DIY basement gig, yet there’s a surgical attention to detail beneath the fuzz. The layers of guitars are meticulously stacked, the drum patterns dynamic and unpredictable. Lo-fi doesn’t mean careless here rather we think it’s a calculated aesthetic choice, one that makes the moments of clarity hit that much harder.
Sonically, Faxing the Vatican sits comfortably alongside the works of Ty Segall, Oh Sees, and early King Gizzard, but it refuses to be pigeonholed. Dunne’s fondness for off-kilter vocal phrasing, buried harmonies, and sudden tempo shifts gives the album its own warped personality. The guitars snarl and wail, the drums crash with reckless abandon, and buried beneath it all are hooks that lodge themselves in your brain like stray shards of glass.
More than just a collection of songs, Faxing the Vatican feels like a complete experience. Each track bleeds into the next, creating a seamless half-hour dive into Dunne’s fuzzed-out psyche. It’s a record made for restless nights and long drives, headphones turned up to drown out the world.
Acid Smoothie may pull from the lineage of garage-psych greats, but with this LP, Dunne proves he’s carving his own crooked, feedback-scorched path. It’s noisy, it’s messy, it’s cathartic — and it’s one of the year’s most exciting underground rock records.
As lovers of the genre, we can be a bit nitpicky, however this fully scratches that itch! Go ahead and listen loud, follow along, and make sure to click those links below for more.
Listen to “Faxing the Vatican”
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