Starting off with "The Preacher & The Setting Sun," Asteroid No. 4 start off on a long, strange trip down the dusty road of classic psych rock, but unlike the Beachwood Sparks (and, to a lesser extent, the Ladybug Transistor collective) these guys never sound like a group of hipsters making ironic music. For all of the bands that take the trip back to the groovy Sixties, Asteroid No. 4 have to be the most authentic band of the bunch. If you didn't have the pictures of these younguns, you'd rightfully think that these guys were your dad's college buddies. In fact, Asteroid No. 4 have something that all of these modern-day retro-rockers don't--a magical instrument that sends Honeyspot back in time-when bands with names like Quicksilver Messenger Service and Moby Grape roamed the earth. It's the harmonica.

I don't know where they managed to find it, but somewhere along the line, they picked up Bob Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home harmonica and are milking it for all of its glory. In fact, it's great to hear that it's still being used, because Scott Vitt is a damn master at it. Just listen to "As Soon As Dawn" or "Made Up My Mind" and tell me that his playing isn't as good as Dylan's or Garcia's. The songwriting's just as good, too; with a wonderful combination of banjo, honky-tonk piano, harmonica, guitar, pot and whiskey bottle, you'd probably think they should have called themselves Flying Astronaut Brothers' Burrito Number 4. Honeyspot sounds like the bastard child of a one-night pot-smoking session between Blonde on Blonde and Workingman's Dead. Throw in a little bit of Sweethearts of the Rodeo and Meat Puppets II for good measure, sprinkle little bits of peyote and shrooms, and you'll pretty much have the recipe for Honeyspot. They never venture out past 1969, and they don't need to. They're stuck in a time-warp, and we're all the better for it.

Asteroid No. 4 have succesfully done what's proven to be impossible: they've radically changed their defined musical style AND made an album that is utterly indebted to the past yet never sounds like a novelty. Honeyspot is a wonderfully refreshing album of mind-expanding road-tripping psychedellic country rock that owes everything to its inspiration yet never sounds anything less than completely original. Good show, gentlemen--just make sure to watch out for the pigs when you tour. They don't trust longhairs...

Never judge a band by their cover. Asteroid No. 4 are often misrepresented in the music press, and frequently likened to artists they have nothing in common with, such as Pink Floyd. As evidenced by their admittedly exhausted last-show-of-the-tour set at the loveable but dilapidated Lakeside Lounge (owned and managed by urban roots-rock guru Eric "Roscoe" Amble), there was nothing remotely cosmic about these twentysomething city cowboys.

Sure, their latest homespun release Honeyspot contained a few ambient moments, but outside the confines of a recording studio, this Philly foursome were down to earth, hard-edged and decidedly gritty.

Asteroid No. 4 hit the ground running, prompting casual street folk that peered through the club's dirty windows to cancel their plans for the evening and head inside before the band beat a path south on I-95. Scott Vitt's raw baritone razor of a voice cut through the clatter of boho sports fans, who were probably expecting something a little more artsy thanks to the aforementioned previews that ran in the Voice and Time Out New York. Jamie Scythe's pedal steel loped lazily over a raucous, busy rhythm section as bassist Eric Harms and drummer Adam Weaver tried to outpace each other amid laughter, shots and spirited interplay.

A geographically appropriate rendition of "Big City Blues," which waxes an ironic lyric of "I can't trust the president, no doubt / this big city life, I can live without" took on an added measure of importance in a neighborhood torn by ongoing rent-control battles, gentrification and images of war-torn Baghdad via CNN just a few yards away from the makeshift stage.

By mid-performance, Weaver and Scythe were heartily harmonizing, and the set list had given way to onstage anarchy, plucking random selections from Apple Street and King Richard's Collectibles. Guitarist Bill McMonnies, seated with his back against the glass fire-exit door, was feeling ill, but that didn't prevent him from punctuating Vitt's tattered melodies with staccato Keith Richards-like riffing and sustained chords which floated down Avenue B.

Vitt ruminated over long drives down Pacific One, blue-jean teenage beauty queens and auburn sunsets while crooning the mid-tempo folk rock anthem "California," giving credence to the theory that the land of milk and honey, above all, is a state of mind, no matter which way the highway turns.

And for Asteroid No. 4, that long and winding road seems to go on forever.