Dez Dare – Cheryl! Your Love Shines Down Like A Supernova’s Death

God Unknown

Although of Australian extraction, Daren Smallman is currently based in the UK, involved with God Unknown Records and recording as synth psych legend Dez Dare. In love with vintage synths and combining glam, post-punk and psychedelia, he’s eager to squeeze all that into a three-minute pop song and thus arrives Cheryl! Your Love Shines Down Like A Supernova’s Death, his latest missive.

With all instruments and singing taken care of by Dez with some vocal assistance from Laura Loriga and Jonny Halifax, who also played lap steel, it is very much a personal crusade with warnings for the listener about the state of the world and its careless inhabitants. His love of synths really does shine through and it would seem that the blunter and blarier the better, with the simplest of rhythmic beats to tie the ideas to.

The opener “Brutalised Robotics” compares technology with animals and the way they are both exploited by the human race. Its metallicised vocals and descending melancholy melody are offset by the beaty battering ram. Dez certainly knows his way around a catchy riff and it seems like a logical symbiosis of glam and post-punk. It is catchier than T-Rex and has far more to say.

There is a kind of rhythmic theme running through the record that is expanded upon with each track, going form the addictive psych groove of the title track to the glam riff put through a dirty punk prism of “Rights Down 50”. There is a plaintive quality to the voice here which suits the subject matter, before being upended by a squall of electric guitar. Meanwhile, “What Ya Gonna Do With Yr Days” is a heavy riffing monster and “Light Touch Of The Man Spreader” is 8-bit-tastic, its video game soundtrack accompanied by spoken word sections.

Their psychedelic leanings are quite addictive, with some extraordinary hypnotic precision squeezed into the three-and-a-half minutes of “Golden Cerebellum”. The album ends with “Blistered Eyeballs”, a psych riff howler that really suits the title with some innate frustration in the vocal delivery. And then it is over and you need to sit down for a rest.

Familiar yet inventive and with plenty of volume plus a touch of subtlety, Cheryl! Your Love Shines Down Like A Supernova’s Death is another fine outing from Dez.

-Mr Olivetti-