The Society of Rockets

The Society of Rockets used to be known as the Shimmer Kids Underpop Association, and beneath that banner this California ensemble produced an impressively expansionist take on woozy homemade psych-pop. Unfortunately, the Shimmer Kids timed their arrival a couple of years too late to climb aboard the Elephant 6 and Terrastock gravy train, and though records like 2002's The Natural Riot showed great promise, by that point it seemed most listeners were too Olivia Tremor Controlled-out for the group to really enter their audience's collective forebrain.

In 2003, after the Shimmer Kids' accomplished The Book of Mirrors EP sank with barely a ripple, the group again assembled in the recording studio, but this time they found their new material to be such a drastic change from their previous work that the result was a reconfigured line-up with the new Society of Rockets name. Gone are the Shimmer Kids' grandiose paisley epics, stuffed to the rafters with dense layers of oddball instrumentation.

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