The Mantles: “Hello”

Photo By Erren Franklin

If you did a keyword search on all the previous Song of the Day posts, you’d probably find the phrase “psych-rock” and “garage” pop up pretty often (It’s probably right behind “indie” and “folk-tinged”). So yeah, we dig garage and psych rock ‘n’ roll, a lot. One of the latest bands to strike our fancy is a Byrds-y garage group out of the resurgent-psych-rock-hotbed of San Francisco called The Mantles.

The Mantles may be one of the few garage-groups around that actually formed in a garage–in drummer Virginia Weatherby’s Bayview pad. She was a young record geek that shared the house with some folks in bands. They just happened to leave their stuff set up in the garage, so Weatherby and Mantles co-founder (guitarist and singer) Michael Olivares started messing about on the instruments. In true garage-rock fashion, Weatherby didn’t actually know how to really play the drums, but that was part of the fun. Bassist friend Matt Roberts soon joined the pair. Today, Justin Loney rounds out the quartet on lead guitar.

The Mantles have made their way down to SXSW, and toured with like-minded Californian Ty Segall, but they’ve taken a more leisurely pace with their career than some of their San Francisco contemporaries–something they explained in a recent interview. They released their self-titled, debut full-length back in 2009, and today they release a brand-new LP called Long Enough To Leave. One of the tracks is a jangly, very 60s tune called “Hello.” It’s got undeniable hooks, and just rough enough around the edges to fire your garage-psych fancy.

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