Beaten By Hippies – Sidetracked In El Paso
Polderrecords – 2025
Rock, Stoner, Alternative
Rated: ***
Out on the scorched plains, where genres blur like a shimmering heat mirage, it does not matter at all what name you give to a dust storm. Beaten By Hippies rides again! Using their mix of alternative rock genres to spur Sidetracked In El Paso through that blistered territory. After their debut album back in 2019, Belgian foursome Beaten By Hippies released two singles before finally introducing us to their new full-sized record Sidetracked In El Paso. They sure took their damn time, but that’s what you get when you get Sidetracked In El Paso. Or covid. Or life in general. Or the four members innate wish to do whatever the hell they want… That might cause for a collision or two when writing songs. Perhaps? Perhaps not and all that happened was El Paso…
Released back in May on Polderrecords they return, older, surer, their sound tempered like iron left in the desert darkness. Expertly mixing all sorts of alternative rock with a lot of fuzz, groove and stoner. With an aloof kind of humor, a lust for nostalgia and storytelling, the lyrics go from elegant, beautiful to bordering on cringe and back in a just a few lines. Most of them wonderfully vocalized by Stephane Legat, who definitely grew as a singer. Touching a raw nerve when the songs call for it and uses a more velvet approach when we need something slick…
We open with Know For Sure, the earlier single, a galloping thing, whose riffs strike like rifle cracks across the endless empty flats. Legat’s voice, rasped, weathered, limited like a man who has shouted too long at the horizon. The drums, charging forward, hitting like flint sparks all across the board, igniting the entire track. And then there’s The Fall, where we hear vocals that strain for nuance, a ballad ushered by strings that drift like windblow prayer flags caught on barbed wire. There is no reason this should work in this inhospitable territory, yet it does, haunting and human. Which is the same with the enigmatic and wonderful title track, ghostly campfire glow and carved slowly into sun whitened whale bone…
The true sand storm happens when Roar comes on. Burning cosmic trails across the blackened desert skies, shooting forward, leaving nothing but dust and hoofprints in the sand. Born In The 80’s is fun, almost indie, or at least very catch. And for those of us that grew up in the era, filled with the memories that made it all tick. You almost start missing the Walkman and the cassette tapes. Final track Filter made me put on The Cable Guy soundtrack after having this album on repeat, one of my all time favorites. Thundering, whipping around like stonerized blues and nineties nods, it’s a three minute send off that leaves a lingering taste for more for hours…
Beaten By Hippies is back, doing whatever the hell they want to do, not reinventing anything, not showing the way to the promised land. But hidden, in the grit of all these songs, and in their stubborn swagger that shows an unashamed love for dust and fuzz, lies something very simple. Something that should be the core of every freaking album. Good songs make a good album and it takes a good band to produce them. The four from Leuven, Belgium, might have gotten Sidetracked In El Paso, but they know their way around now and they know which desert to claim as their own…
(Written by JK)
