The Raw Emotional Journey of Sreym Hctim’s Split Ends, Split Head Makes it a Dark Psych/Indie Pop Masterpiece

SreymHctim1_crop
Sreym Hctim, photo courtesy the artist

Reversing his name to the project moniker Sreym Mctim, Mitch Myers released his latest album Split Ends, Split Head. Often his vocals are nearly whispered just shy of sotto voce, like he’s needing to keep a secret lost in a toy store of devices that make the various sounds in each song. It’s a record that may remind some in an oblique way of a combination of 2000s Legendary Pink Dots records and late 90s indie pop where, in the latter, the artists thought nothing of including straight ahead sounds and noise on the albums as part of demolishing convention even as they wrote some of the most exquisite pop songs of the last thirty years but on their terms and with the former through purely aiming to express a mood and a psychological space with whatever tools can most closely approximate it. There is a sense of darkness, isolation and disorientation that runs through each track and one envisions a hall of mirrors that challenge Myers’ narrator with aspects of his life that he has chosen thus far to ignore or see as suited his personal life agenda and ego at the time. By the end and the track “Old Flame” the narrator has been shorn of his erroneous notions and the false foundation that was the bedrock of his life, left vulnerable but able to rebuild from a more honest place. The amalgam of dark psychedelia and organic indie pop is fascinating across the album but it’s one for those with a taste for psychologically raw songwriting. Definitely for fans of Orbit Service. Listen below and follow Sreym Hctim on Facebook.

https://open.spotify.com/album/0eQluGEj8ptUF7gAvzafEK https://sreymhctim.bandcamp.com/album/split-ends-split-head
facebook.com/sreymhctim