Arguably, the king of 80s psych was Robyn Hitchcock, whose band The Soft Boys emerged from the British punk scene. Hitchcock’s heart was always in psychedelia, though, and each of the two Soft Boys albums includes some songs that are more psych than sneer. When the band disbanded, Hitchock went solo and became a full-on psychedelic singer-songwriter with a penchant for the surreal. After several solo albums, he formed a band called Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians who released a half dozen mostly brilliant albums that showcase his clever and deliciously weird lyrical sensibilities. Hitchcock continues to release albums that are simply too “out there” to gain mainstream acceptance, although his music is hardly discordant.

The Church, an Australian band that formed in 1980, are an alternative band that occasionally ventured into neo-psychedelic territory. Though they are often aligned with neo-psychedelia, they really only dabbled in it—releasing trippy songs here and there. Among these songs are “Field of Mars”, Texas Moon”, “Desert”, “Myrrh”, and “Toy Head”

There were quite a few 80s bands who could be described similarly. Let’s take the New Romantic scene that occurred primarily in England in the late 70s/early 80s. Siouxsie and the Banshees, Echo and the Bunnymen, and The Teardrop Explodes are some of the bands who are classified as both New Romantic and neo-psychedelic. Each of these bands has a subtle psychedelic influence that manifests itself in certain songs but does not define their overall sound.

Perhaps because the decade was so anti-psychedelic on the surface, 80’s psychedelic music was more understated than that of the 60s. The Paisley Underground is typically described as a collective of L.A.-based psychedelic bands, but the psych quotient of these groups is actually fairly low. The Dream Syndicate is among these groups and they really only developed their neo-psychedelic side much later in their career. Curiously, The Bangles, who scored a number of 80s pop hits (e.g., “Walk Like an Egyptian”, “Eternal Flame” “Manic Monday”), were another band considered part of the Paisley Underground when, in reality, they didn’t even approach psychedelia. The Rain Parade did, but it still wasn’t the dominant force in their music. Green on Red showcased a psychedelic element on their debut album, but their highly-regarded sophomore release Gravity Talks owes its debt to Americana, not psychedelia.

The first garage rock revival occurred in the 80s with bands like The Chesterfield Kings, The Fleshtones, and Lyres taking the torch from their 60s fore-bearers. These groups managed to capture the essence of their 60s counterparts (e.g., The Chocolate Watchband, The Standells, The Seeds) without adding anything new. These bands mimicked the originals so much that they even adopted the look of these bands as well as the sound. Although it overlapped, garage rock was never really psychedelic; it just peaked at the same time—a little earlier actually. So the bands that jumped on the 80s garage-rock bandwagon weren’t psychedelic either. Their music was typically bold and crude, bearing more resemblance to punk rock than psychedelia.

One group, Plasticland, is an exception. Plasticland was lumped in with the garage rock revivalists, but were sonically more ambitious and psychedelic than their contemporaries.