The Three 4 Tens started out more than a decade ago when Northeast natives Joe Tagg and Jamie Mahon got together and started blasting their neighbors with a little garage-rock good humor.
Since then they have emerged as a steady, even if dysfunctional, presence on the Philly psych-pop scene. The band has put out four albums, a feat accomplished across years marked by infighting, lost members and massive substance abuse.
Their down time, however, was also marked by some good stuff — like a string of released singles, contributions to the TheSounds of Psychadelphia, and plenty of blistering, projector-illuminated freak-out shows.
Their first release was 1997’s Throw Back Move, a seven-song EP that played like a garage-rock album recorded in the 1960s. Four years later the band emerged with a full-length, Change is On the Way. Picked up by some prominent indie labels, the album was received well here and abroad, giving the Three 4 Tens a hearty following in England.
In 2003, a new album, Taking Northern Liberties, brought out some of the band’s first songs while also soaking up the scene in that neighborhood. With a loose and jangling psychedelic pop edge, Taking Northern Liberties further established Three 4 Tens’ penchant for blending trippy nostalgia with modern rock grooves.
And while the album worked in cool keyboard riffs, harmonica and violin, Taking Northern Liberties stood out as a guitar-driven work made rich by languid vocals and moods that shifted from blissful oblivion (Philly Blues) to gritty doses of reality (Whorehouse and Suicide).
Despite its dark psych-rock awesomeness, it’d be another four years before Mahon and Tagg would join forces to put out a new set of recordings. Still, the Three 4 Tens’ latest album, Down the Way, is 10 tracks of fresh and succinct psychedelia that belies the band’s rocky foundations.
While other members have come and gone, Mahon and Tagg remain the creative minds behind the Three 4 Tens.
On Down the Way, the two wrote 10 songs each before splitting the album and finally laying down five of their own tracks. Perhaps this accounts for some of the album’s eclectic and wandering tendencies.
Starting out the album, the wavering guitar and ethereal qualities of Everyday set the pace, but there is plenty of variety on Down the Way.
With a strung-out drone that smacks of Pink Floyd, songs like Mahon’s Gold Medal Moment bring the Three 4 Tens straight into the glory days of dark psych rock. The shadowy tone matches the substance of the lyrics, which recount a young mother buying crack.
More of that murderous beauty is dished out on numbers like Kill Dr. Strange, a piece by Tagg where grim vocals are balanced by mesmerizing and driving guitar riffs via The Who’s Pete Townsend.
The band comes full circle in its repertoire with bits like All The Pretty Girls, where the vibe is more in tune with early Kinks, Beach Boys harmonies, and the wavering haze of the Zombies.
These days, Three 4 Tens also includes drummer Mike Ambs, but Down the Way also features contributions from former band member and guitarist Brian MacNamara, as well as a handful of other musicians from the Philly scene. These divergences aside, the album does have a certain thread running through it that links not only the songs but also ties Three 4 Tens to its early albums.
Despite the various rifts and bouts of hedonistic binges that have distracted the band over the years, they have always managed to put out music with a perverse sense of the sublime.
Mahon said he and Tagg are currently working on a new album in much the same fashion that Down the Way was created. He also expects it to be Three 4 Tens’ swan song.
"We’ll probably do that one last album, and one more show," said Mahon, who has been working on new material for the next release. "It’s pretty dark stuff, I don’t know why, because I’m in a really good place right now, but that’s just how I write." •• Check it out . . .
Who: The Three 4 Tens (opening for Dead Meadows)
Where: Johnny Brenda’s, Frankford and Girard avenues
When: Tonight (April 17). Doors open at 9 p.m., tickets are $9.