Psychic Temple is the ever-morphing, ever-mutating constellation of players constituting Chris Schlarb’s own Planet Long Beach Rock and Roll Orchestra.

Psychic Temple has been a lot of things: a semi-cult, a recording collective, a rock band that plays like a jazz band or the other way around. Schlarb has also been many things: a truck driver, a video game composer, a private investigator, but he is first and foremost an assembler, someone whose vision and imaginative spirit intuitively understands how disparate artists might fit together, forming cosmic pickup bands that bring his visions to life: free jazz freakouts, fusions of folk, pop, rock and roll. Psychic Temple remains an ever-adaptable organism, mutating as required to fit the moment and Schlarb’s creative inclinations.

Yet despite this industrious zeal and continual output, there is one thing Psychic Temple is definitively not: a business. “I’m just going to do what I want to do,” Schlarb says. “I’m not trying to sabotage it, but I have to leave open the possibility of complete sabotage if that’s what is required.” 

Somewhere along the line, Schlarb got it into his head that perhaps his musical visions will lead him elsewhere from here on out. “9 is the end, it’s over,” Schlarb sings after the ninth song on this, his ninth album under the Psychic Temple banner. He wrote the gnomic, elliptical figure with 7-year old daughter Isabella at the kitchen table. As drummer Tabor Allen and bassist Josh Ottum dig into a swampy, two chord groove, Schlarb is joined by a choir of acoustics (drummer Ben Lumsdaine on 6- and Max Knouse on 12-string), aching pedal steel from Dave Easley, electric sitar from Mike Baggetta, Hammond organ and a group of sympathetic voices that includes longtime companions, collaborators, and family. If this were the end of Psychic Temple, it wouldn’t be such a bad end after all. 

AUDIO (new album, Doggie Paddlin’ Thru The Cosmic Consciousness)

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/5vdhklik918s834bobtpd/h?rlkey=ljnvsdqfb1sil0qu6kpfotemd&dl=0

tickets for this incredible show are $20