Connan Mockasin
Connan Tant Hosford, aka Connan Mockasin, is a psychedelic pop musician from Te Awanga, New Zealand staging his first San Diego show at the Casbah on June 3. I had to do some reading up and listening to tell you any more; he hasn’t gotten a lot of attention in the U.S. and I was frankly unfamiliar with his music until today. He apparently splits his residences between England, L.A., and Japan, and I daresay that world-hopping lifestyle is reflected in the music. I skipped through all of his albums I could find and discovered two fairly distinct phases: His earliest material as Connan Mockasin could be called a simmering stoner period, with lots of buzzy bliss and lyrical meandering about cosmic (if elementary) “truths.” Later efforts take on a sharper, though still jam-centered, sheen, with plenty of plucky rhythms and surprisingly soaring guitar work that brings to mind vintage blues-inspired players such as Mike Bloomfield, Alvin Lee, and at times even Clapton himself. It’s engaging music, albeit so inconsistent that I had to check a few times to make sure I hadn’t accidentally loaded from a different artist’s playlist. The bill includes comedic ukulele internet star Molly Lewis, a sort of one-woman Garfunkel and Oates.