On a recent Sunday morning on the 134 Freeway, singer and punk rock icon Keith Morris was behind the wheel of his Honda, rolling toward a final rehearsal with his band Off! in a Pomona studio. Blasting on his car stereo were songs from “Free LSD,” the quartet’s latest album, so Morris could reacquaint himself with the record’s far-out lyrics of alien invasions and mind control.
But the new songs have an added layer of electronics, psychedelic noise and jazzy improvisation to accompany lyrics less self-obsessed than paranoid about alien forces, as Morris warns: “There is another side/We are not alone!” The plan was to stretch out in new ways and break the usual boundaries of hardcore. “It felt like the future and the past coming together at the same time,” says Coats, who has produced all Off!’s albums. “I said, ‘Come on, dude.