Roky Erickson's Devotional Number One

 Blog Roky

My sister-in-law recently gifted me "True Love Cast Out All Evil," psych rock pioneer Roky Erickson's first album in more than a decade. The disc is a collection of unreleased songs that Roky wrote over his career and, with the help of Will Sheff and Okkervil River, completed and put to tape. The entire record is deeply moving, sometimes dark and often hopeful, and a lovely testament to why Erickson is as relevant now as he was more than 40 years ago when he and The Thirteenth Floor Elevators dropped acid in Austin, Texas and essentially invented psychedelic rock. The songs on True Love are newly recorded save "Devotional Number One," listenable above, that opens the LP. It was recorded on a reel-to-reel in Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane where Erickson spent several years in a Thorazine haze undergoing shock therapy. He landed there after pleading not guilty by reason of insanity when arrested in 1969 for carrying a single joint. True Love Cast Out All Evil (Thanks, Heather Sparks!)