Though they’re beloved Paisley Underground contemporaries of REM, The Dream Syndicate ’s third album since their 2012 reformation sounds nothing like the Athens quartet.

On opener, The Regulator, an almost entirely spontaneous 20-minute jam offering wild saxophone interjections from Marcus Tenney alongside sitar drones via The Long Ryders’ Stephen McCarthy, even Steve Wynn’s occasionally Captain Beefheart vocals, recorded at home, are his first take.

The Longing’s pysch-rock is admittedly more conventional, but its climax spaces out, too, while The Slow Rendition explores beat poetry territory before cosmic tendencies again assume control.

Rating: 7/10
Wyndham Wallace

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