Didn’t the Afghan Whigs release 1965 in 1998? I doubt Ryan Garbes has ever had comparisons to the funk-junk skuzz of Greg Dulli, but it’s more apropos than first imagined. 1965 may lack the fusion soul of Dulli’s vision, but it’s 2012 and times they are a-changin’. This is a new vision of 1965, one where the prelude to the Summer of Love was a county fair run on acid. It’s scarier and more distraught, lending cautionary tones to what would become Charles Manson’s playground. Garbes lines 1965 with awkward funhouse mirrors, distorting playfulness into dastardly reminders of our inner ugliness. It would have served a stout reminder that, in post-McCarthyism, the hearts of some men still beat black. But 1965 emerges optimistically from its fortune-telling doldrums, providing enlightenment to the decades that followed. Here we stand in 2012, once again gripped by imagined fear and political strife, and once more, we have ill-shaped reflections of our nefarious selves to both caution and entertain.
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