Long before Miracle Sweepstakes’ wowed the world with cult favorite record Turn Heel, the New York anachronistic pop art inverters were working on a their most grand undertaking yet with Rorschached. As soon as word from bandleader Craig Heed and the group’s public relations team that the new record was being brought out into the world — the anticipation and hype reached a clamorous tilt in our offices. Communications between teams went back and forth to dead ends and up against impossible schedules. Yet amid this deluge of countless diversions, dozens of emails, direct messages and more — Week in Pop is now proud to present the first listen to Miracle Sweepstakes’ Rorschached.

Rorschached is Miracle Sweepstakes' savage journey to the heart of the ink blotter. Craig and company take the wisdom gleaned from Nuggets compilations and the aesthetic of Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd and channel it all as a code of gospel and adopted ethos. Enter now the astronomy domine of "Forcefield" that beams like an almighty burning bright aura to be reckoned with. Semblances of styles held over from 1969 are brought to the present of 2019 as heard on "Flyer Lie" that operates like a conceptual psych vignette combined with grungy power pop sections. From unexpected key changes and movements that materialize out of a nowhere, the brilliance of Miracle Sweepstakes is on full display on the time twisting genius "Shoot the Blue" that is the kind of near-perfection pop that many have waited their entire existence to behold. Rorschached shines with moments of pure beauty as heard on the catchy "Boomerang" that sweeps serenely with a sort of ineffable sweetness and light that leads to the mind meditating ballad of soul searching of "Memory Grain".

"Black Bouquet" marches with vaudeville progressions that burst with moments like a floral adorned parade, right before delving into the illustrious void of surprise and illuminated discovery on "Oh My". The genius single "Relative Mind" is comprised of everything you never knew was still possible in contemporary music, bopping like an obscure oddity discovered in Emitt Rhodes' home living room studios recorded in the early 70s right around when the Beatles' split up. Craig continues the spellbinding adventure with "Signs Up and Down" that takes a detour to bizarre patches of dissonance before arriving at the grandiose "Mary, Where Are You?" that elevates the energy upward towards the sky and sun. The record concludes with "I Try" that gently skips and strolls like a lonesome walk back home after embarking upon a magical mystery tour of kaleidoscopic merry-go-rounds and mind expanding fantasias.

Craig from Miracle Sweepstakes present us with the origin story for Rorschached:

I wrote around two dozen songs in 2016, about half of which made up the songs we recorded for Rorschached. Where our first record was a little more complex and proggy, for this one I was trying a more songwriterly [sic] approach. Songs like "Shoot the Blue" and "Memory Grain" are closer to traditionally-structured pop songs, with big choruses and less focus on flashy playing. Still, there's some weird, psyched out tunes like "Flyer Lie" and "Mary, Where Are You?" that are at least as left field as our earlier material.

We were striving for an older sound during recording. Charles Burst, who engineered the album, did a great job of making things crackly — the guitars and vocals have the grit of my 4-track demos, but it still came out sounding like a big rock record instead of just some bedroom project. Every song hit the tape machine at least twice. We spent two years on and off making this thing, and I went somewhat off the deep end along the way. That's where the title Rorschached comes from: if you keep obsessing on something, you eventually lose sight of what you're looking at. That's probably truer for me than most people, but I think it's a familiar plight to many, creative-types or otherwise.

Miracle Sweepstakes present the video for “Relative Mind” directed and edited by Daniel Neal.

Miracle Sweepstakes' second album Rorschached will be available November 22 via One Weird Trick.