The Able Sea, The Able Sea

With a voyeuristic fixation on meandering, psychedelic soundscapes, Austin band The Able Sea has released a debut album to satisfy that taste. From start to finish, let there be no confusion: this self-titled work is well-primed to make you feel windswept, to hypnotize you. Listener, beware.

The Able Sea is a trio, including Robert Pierson, Alex Thompson, and Robert Fisher, with contributions on the album by Brad Bell and David Morrison. Thompson’s voice is sorcery, drifting like a fugitive phantom in the album’s opener, “Western Dreams.” The rest of the tracks are just as serene — almost reverent, like prayers. The Able Sea’s marching-psych cadence sounds a little sleepy at times, suffering from a comfy-cozy effect that’s someone’s nostalgic daydream of the late 1960s. The pace isn’t paralyzed, it just could use more texture.

I like this Sea. I’ve heard of a heaving sea, a vast sea, a dark sea, and the slime of the sea, but the is the first instance in my life of an Able Sea. It’s a cool sound and rises and falls easily, like the poetry that comes in the record sleeve: “east east is now west west stumbling forward with the best of them not thinking about the next and on he goes across the ocean.”