Man. I never understood why the term “dreamy” suggested bliss or excessive charm. My dreams have always baffled me—tiny black snakes morph into bodybuilders; college agendas fill my head as I dash through tortuous hallways; once I even woke with the taste of ceramic in my mouth, after my dream self had decided to munch on a plate. Like that platter I was inexplicably chewing, dreams come to us in fragments unbound by our conscious logic and as clearly wrong as those visions might be, those of us under their spell (and who’ve never mastered lucid dreaming) can do nothing but submit to whatever joy, panic, or punishment our brains put us through.

Clearly, Atlanta duo Twin Trances understand this. While the brute acid blowout of “Peacock” suggests a straightforward homage to stoned-out rockers like Queens of the Stone Age, the monochrome video that follows more resembles an unsettling dream than a bad trip. An unidentified burglar rifles slowly through a file cabinet filled with only TV sets, bars and grates flash across the screen, bits of script dissolve in the mini-maelstrom of a toilet’s flush. “I think it’s mostly about reining in the madness or helplessness that can come from an active stream of consciousness—and, at the same time, about trying to find some kind of truth inside it,” says guitarist and vocalist Chris Strawn. The “I think” is crucial—like our most vivid dreams, both song and video paralyze us with their ambiguity. Only in this fragmented world could the humble toilet serve as a “meditative instrument,” a device to cleanse the cluttered mind and better grasp whatever “truth” lies in the subconscious.

In that sense, “Peacock” is my kind of “dreamy”: disorienting, intoxicating, inescapable, with the faintest sense that something’s gone horribly wrong. And if that’s the case, then I cannot give a fuck for your definition of “dreamy,” as this one’s doing me in quite nicely.

Twin Trances’ sophomore LP Two On One is out Sep. 30 via Atlanta-based Dirty Slacks. Pre-orders are available here.

Twin Trances will celebrate the release of their Two On One on Sat., Sep. 30 at Star Bar alongside Set & Setting, JohnDenver DeathPlane, and Insomniac. Doors open at 9 p.m. Admission is $8. 21+ to enter.

More Info
Bandcamp: twintrances.bandcamp.com
Facebook: @twintrances
SoundCloud: @twin-trances
Twitter: @TwinTrances