Album Preview
Levitation Room: Ethos
Ethos not only serves as a great introduction to the band Levitation Room, but also as the group's thesis statement and, quite simply, a real good time.
The Burger Records empire has organically grown so enormous that it is now no longer very useful to describe a band as a "typical Burger band," as the label embraces so many different varieties. But if there was a typical Burger band of the moment, it might be LA's own Levitation Room. Formed a couple of years ago, the band has quickly become a lynch-pin of the East Los Angeles scene, releasing a couple of EPs and founding Everydaze Music, a boutique music and clothing store that doubles as a performance space. They would collaborate with their local musician friends and very organically create a legitimate scene.
Now they are making their full-length debut, a throw-back garage-rock funhouse called Ethos. Throughout they tap into a classic, lysergic, 60s-era rock vibe that falls somewhere between the Seeds and the Byrds, with nods to LA's own Paisley Underground of the 80s and the lo-fi revolution of the 90s. It shimmers in all the right places (such as on the album's opener, "Strangers of Our Time"), soars in others ("Cosmic Flowers"), and descends into a pleasant haze of incense elsewhere ("Standing in the Rain"). Ethos not only serves as a great introduction to the band, but also as the group's thesis statement and, quite simply, a real good time.
-Eric J. Lawrence