![Mood Rings, ‘VPI Harmony’ – Album Review](http://townsquare.media/site/443/files/2013/06/Mood-Rings-VPI-Harmony.jpg?w=980&q=75)
Mood Rings, ‘VPI Harmony’ – Album Review
Mood Rings' debut album cover art is worthy of an exhibit. Surreal and playfully evocative, it's like something Rene Magritte would have painted after inhaling a plate of pot brownies. And that image -- a mysterious door opening into the clouds, releasing a tidal-wave into a disheveled bedroom -- couldn't have been paired with a more appropriate batch of songs.
'VPI Harmony' is the very definition of a "headphones album." It's a towering monolith of dream-pop sex and psychedelic mystery -- slithering like a snake, drifting like an aimless cloud. These aren't songs so much as colors. Guitars and synths are totally engulfed in reverb, individual melodies blurring together in trance-like breezes. (Is the singer a man or a woman? Is that a saxophone withering into the swirl on opener 'Dark Flow?') Take the New Wave slow-dance of 'The Line' or the mind-melting laser-show atmospherics of 'Perusha' -- this is some seriously trippy, three-dimensional s---.
It's also exhausting. The capital-r Reverb is often majestic in its own rite (few rock bands of this generation chase the R-dragon with such well-engineered heft), but it has a tendency of dwarfing the music's clever twists and turns -- like how 'Promise Me Eternity' suddenly drifts from jangle-pop to a girl-group daydream suited for a 'Twin Peaks' roadhouse. The saving grace is the rhythm section, whose muscle and propulsion keep the songs from drifting too far out into orbit.
Mood Rings do the whole "reverb-worshipping guitar-pop" thing better than most. But the best moments on 'VPI Harmony' suggest they're capable of way, way more.
More From Diffuser.fm
![Pearl Jam, ‘Gigaton': Album Review](http://townsquare.media/site/295/files/2020/02/Monkeywrench-RecordsRepubli.jpg?w=980&q=75)
![The Raconteurs, ‘Help Us Stranger': Album Review](http://townsquare.media/site/295/files/2019/06/tmr.jpg?w=980&q=75)
![The Kinks, ‘The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society: 50th Anniversary Edition': Album Review](http://townsquare.media/site/295/files/2018/09/bmg.jpg?w=980&q=75)
![R.E.M., ‘R.E.M. at the BBC': Album Review](http://townsquare.media/site/295/files/2018/09/craft-recordings.jpg?w=980&q=75)
![David Bowie, ‘Loving the Alien': Album Review](http://townsquare.media/site/295/files/2018/09/parlophone.jpg?w=980&q=75)
![Arctic Monkeys, ‘Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino': Album Review](http://townsquare.media/site/295/files/2018/05/arctic.jpg?w=980&q=75)
![Jack White, ‘Boarding House Reach': Album Review](http://townsquare.media/site/295/files/2018/03/white2.jpg?w=980&q=75)
![The Darkness, ‘Pinewood Smile': Album Review](http://townsquare.media/site/443/files/2017/09/Darkness-Pinewood-Smile-Photo.jpg?w=980&q=75)
![Liam Gallagher, ‘As You Were': Album Review](http://townsquare.media/site/443/files/2017/08/Liam-Gallagher1.jpg?w=980&q=75)