Well, you knew this was coming. Dorwytch hinted (OK, explained) that Alexander Tucker was moving closer and closer towards a kind of English pastoralism and now he’s got to Third Mouth, where the drones and buzzes move still further away from the longer forms of his early albums and head towards smaller, yet exquisitely designed, packages of psychedelic folk. This is like someone’s swallowed Rob Young’s Electric Eden, spent a few long nights reassembling the component parts (alongside a few glasses of wormwood and mead ) and then regurgitated the lot as a fully formed corn dolly. This is a good thing.
There’s much here that is plaintive, meditative, twilight leaning; the tinkles of baby keyboards on “The Glass Axe,” the early (is that a unicorn?) T- Rexisms of “Third Mouth” and these gently picked figures blend well with the other stuff, the Celtic drones and jaws harpings of “Andromeon,” for instance. In fact, the latter reminds me a little of much-ignored medieval ambient Front Line Assembly side project Will, only without the booming kettle drums.
Alexander Tucker will more or less be ignored again, despite making the best undiscovered 1967 psychfolkrock album you’ll hear all year. He’s made the album you want those albums in Electric Eden to sound like, an album that’s worthy of much more attention than it’ll get.I have no idea what Alexander Tucker looks like. After a consistent run of increasingly great albums, I really should.
-Loki-
