Carl Krausnick’s Handle with Care tears a strange, celestial hole through the alt-indie ceiling, arriving as the kind of artful slacker-psych jam that makes Wayne Coyne’s cosmic harmonies feel like part of the same far-off constellation. After a soaring rock-opera-esque guitar riff throws the electricity of amplification into a distorted psychedelic kaleidoscope, the track slips into an arrangement swimming with the cerebral care of Radiohead, the endearing wonk of Grandaddy, and a tinge of The Beatles in their most mind-altering era.
Krausnick handles each transition in sound in the way the metaphysics behind alchemy could explain, turning fractured guitar textures, warped pop structures, and emotionally off-kilter songwriting into something oddly pure. The Memphis-based indie psych artist, fresh from his debut LP, Dining Companion, pushes deeper into art-rock terrain here, letting Handle with Care feel loose, lucid, and spiritually aerodynamic all at once.
The Flaming Lips, early Stephen Malkmus, Radiohead, and Grandaddy hover as useful coordinates, yet Krausnick’s signature reaches somewhere stranger than reference points can contain, with genuine cross-over appeal. If humanity ever needs to negotiate with beings from another planet, I’m voting for Carl Krausnick as our ambassador; there are few people better equipped to exhibit the beauty and purity human minds are capable of.
Handle with Care is now available to stream on all major platforms, including SoundCloud.
Review by Amelia Vandergast
