No one can accuse the Los Angeles band Dream Phases of false advertising. These Bumblefest headliners play psychedelic-influenced rock that can indeed be dreamy and suffused with melodic harmonies, but they’re not afraid to startle you out of your reverie with buzzy guitar solos.

Dream Phases started as singer-guitarist Brandon Graham’s solo passion project. “I was primarily working as a side touring and session musician for other groups and I had built up a collection of tunes that I wanted to release,” he tells PureHoney.
Graham quickly realized he wanted to play these songs live as well and wrangled together a group of cohorts including his brother Shane Graham on drums.

An early biography cites a constellation of favorite West Coast bands, from The Beach Boys to Autolux. ”We pull from a pretty diverse source of inspiration and influences, music obviously being the primary one; however we are also immensely influenced by other art forms such as film, photography and illustration,” Graham says. “From the beginning we’ve been heavily influenced by a lot of ‘60s-‘70s music and culture, but lately we’ve been drawing from more contemporary things as well as some of our childhood ‘90s influences.”

They just released their third album, Phantom Idol, which features a dozen new songs, some of which came together as spontaneously as a dream. “‘Turn Away‘ was written together between Shane, Keveen [Baudouin] and myself from a total improvised jam. I came up with the bass line, then Shane started with the Krautrock influenced beat followed by Keveen with the lead guitar riff. Then I came up with the vocal melodies and we collaborated on some of the lyrics. The song was written and demoed in under two hours.”

Just as you wouldn’t expect a recurring dream to be identical each and every night, don’t expect exact replicants in concert of what you hear on their albums. “We tend to expand a few songs and jam a little more,” Graham says. “Live we are a bit more high energy and psychedelic than our studio recordings. We often work with visual artists for an immersive experience.”

Bumblefest is Sept. 6 and 7 in downtown West Palm Beach. bumblefest.com dreamphases.bandcamp.com ~ David Rolland