I listened to this without looking at, without even seeing the title and it was still the first chimes of Summer. This is Spacemen 3 warm, a kind of druggy depth that might almost be twee if it wasn’t so headstrong, so sure of where it was going. I feel like I’ve spent over a year listening to Autumn and Winter records. The Tory/Lib Dem coalition doesn’t do Summer. Artists have been almost uniformly dragging themselves along the grey, downcast days, making more of geist than zeit, letting music drift away into the dark, into (mere) hauntings and echoes. The best psych folk album of the year (Alexander Tucker’s [post=alexander-tucker-third-mouth text=”Third Mouth”]) mostly turns away from summer hues and even the cleaner, sharper ends of electronica (Rustie et al) seem headed towards caverns of frost and tunnels of ice…
You probably won’t be surprised by this record, and in this case I don’t think this is a bad thing. Despite the fact they’ve been away for ages (I could look it up but then maybe a fairy would die), they sound like they’ve just kept going. If anything, this sounds more like their influences than they ever did and this time most of their influences are literally here as well: bits of Galaxie 500, Luna, Seefeel, Spacemen 3… There’s a …cosiness about this that I like despite sort of hating that term and normally preferring, er, Coseyness (Jesus, sorry). Everyone seems to be having great fun, even when they’re pitch-shifting down The Go Gos “Our Lips Are Sealed” into some slurred trip hop nightmare (doesn’t beat the Fun Boy Three version, though). There’s a predictable cover of Suicide’s “Cheree” which is unpredictable only in the sense that it’s probably my favourite version of the song (and it’s against some pretty stiff competition); it drifts in and out of consciousness, slipping by on (I guess) lazer guided melodies. Beautiful, even for an old guy like me who thought they were drained by that song.
The originals are similarly sunswept; “Electric Sound of Summer” ambles lazily towards a conclusion (you might need a sharper intake of drugs to make a tune here) before the epic, piano-led ambient melt of “Thank You Jesus” sends you further out towards the sun… There’s nothing here you wouldn’t want to be here if you’ve heard Füxa before and this is oddly reassuring. In fact, it’s not even odd; of course you want this to be released this Summer, you need it. The sun is gonna come out, summer is a-cumen. You can start blowing up the floating chair, sweep the pool, start the ice-crusher…Be lazy. The revolution will come a little later, this year.
-Loki-
