Some records announce themselves. Others emerge – already cracked at the edges, warm with the weight of time, familiar in the way a long-unseen friend can be. Lorquin’s Admiral, the debut from the band of the same name, is one of those records. Not a debut in spirit, but in name only. This is a record made by lifers – players who’ve already built and broken down entire sonic kingdoms, now finding each other somewhere down the line with nothing left to prove and everything left to feel.
This thing doesn’t just sound like the desert – it’s made of it. You can trace the bloodline: Afghan Whigs, Hermano, Yawning Sons, Sons of Alpha Centauri, Orquesta del Desierto, Luna Sol, the Fizz Fuzz… These aren’t just scene names; they’re tectonic plates in the underground heavy-psych landscape. And here they are again – not rehashing past glories, but reconfiguring them. Reshaping that collective experience into something looser, deeper, and more intuitively felt.
The writing core – Marlon King, Nick Hannon, and Dandy Brown – already carved a mark with Yawning Sons’ Sky Island, and Lorquin’s Admiral feels like the next chapter in that lineage. But this one leans harder into the riff, the low-end throb, the groove that stretches time. It’s soulful, yes – but also swampy, narcotic, and textured. It carries that unmistakable “been there, done that, burned the map” energy of musicians who’ve outlasted scenes and outlived trends.
Dawn and Dandy Brown’s harmonies bring a kind of weary beauty to the whole thing – not delicate, but grounded, like Bonnie & Clyde with reverb tanks. Steve Earle (no, not that one – the one, from Afghan Whigs – the backbone) is the drummer who knows how to hold back, which in this kind of music is worth more than any 32nd-note fill. His pocket is wide, his touch intuitive, and it gives the whole band room to breathe.
And while we’re talking pedigree – David Angstrom (Hermano, Luna Sol) and Country Mark Engel aren’t just flavor additions here. They’re fully embedded – bending strings like mirages on the horizon, bringing layered guitar work that feels lived-in rather than overthought. Their presence rounds out the record’s sprawl without pulling it apart.
As for genre tags – sure, call it psychedelic stoner rock if you need a sticker. But Lorquin’s Admiral isn’t interested in obeying blueprints. This is music that remembers why stoner rock mattered in the first place: it was never about volume, it was about vibe. About patience. About surrender. There’s a current of blues here, but not the kind you play at bars – it’s the kind you hum when you’re lost. There’s psych, but not kaleidoscopic – more like heatstroke. And there’s desert rock, but stripped of cliché – closer to Earth than Mars.
The whole album plays like a transmission from somewhere just out of reach. It doesn’t hit you with hooks so much as it draws you in with texture, tone, and repetition. You don’t listen once and walk away humming. You spin it again. You let it sink in. And then you realize you’ve been humming it for days.
Ultimately, this is not a record that makes noise about legacy – it is legacy. It doesn’t coast on past credits, but it sure as hell draws power from them. These musicians have nothing to prove, and so everything they play feels necessary. That’s the secret. That’s what makes it hum under the skin.
Rock isn’t dead. It just got wiser, dustier, deeper – and it’s sitting in the back of a sunburnt van, tuning up for one more long, slow ride into the glow.
Released by Argonauta Records on June 27th, 2025
Music source for review – Grand Sounds PR
