★★★

Treating your ears to Morgan Delt’s homegrown kaleidoscopic melodiousness is akin to taking a sip from a cool glass of ’60s psych.

The record kicks off with the powerful ‘I Don’t Wanna See What’s Happening Outside’. The dreamy, near-ethereal track is leisurely paced, acting as the perfect preface for a 39-minute escapade through a host of imagined worlds. A pensive finish to the song then melds into ‘The System of 1000 Lies’, a powerful tune dominated by an authoritarian sitar chord.

Delt takes a step back in ‘Another Person’, a track which proves clean but uninspired: unfortunately it’s monotonous, and doesn’t feel like it achieves very much. It’s at this point, in fact, that the record begins to slip, and ‘Sun Powers’ is a strange trip through some pretty unfulfilling, derivative territory.

That said, things are saved by the outstanding psych pop finale, ‘Some Sunsick Day’. Vocals often lost throughout the rest of the record come to the fore in what is the album’s most exuberant number, capping off proceedings on a high.

Ultimately, Phase Zero is a portrait of Delt’s maturation but there’s something lacking: it never quite feels complete.

Morgan Delt’sPhase Zerois available now through Sub Pop/Inertia.

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