By L.C. Mason
Manifest Destiny: the belief that divine forces lay in the vast American West before 19th-century settlers arrived to explore and conquer. The West meant progress, raw living, and the flourishing of the American dream. The edge of the continent has been a magnet for the brave, weird, and fringe-dwelling since the East’s puritanical purging sessions, and California continues to be viewed as the country’s wayward beacon of creativity.
The West has since been mystified and exalted in American lore – in the Western – spaghetti or not – and the maniacal prose of wild literati and the brain-burn of psychedelia, to name just a few cultural movements. Currently upholding the West Coast’s prismatic musical legacy are Los Angeles’ Spindrift, which is vigorously paying homage to everything the California sun has spawned in the past four decades. Follow the band from the phantasms brought on by the desert heat to the delirium of the open road to even the weightlessness of outer space.