Label: Nettwerk Format: CD
While we’re all waiting for the Legendary Pink Dots to come back, and for Skinny Puppy to repeat last year’s German reunion with a local gig for local people, cEvin Key, Edward Ka-Spel and associated LPD and Download crews have crafted another Tear Garden album, and it’s a blinder. You know the score – a gothier Dots, maybe, or a more psychedelic Download, or a way more fucked up New Order, or Jean-Michel Jarre on really bad drugs, or… OK, maybe you don’t know the score, ‘cos maybe there isn’t one, unless it’s the scoring of some of the afore-mentioned really bad drugs. And really good really bad drugs they are too.
It all kicks off with “Lament”, a nice poppy number with Ka-Spel adding some frailty and desperation to the bouncy synths and echoey guitar, before turning into a reworking of the lyrics from old Dots classic “I Am The Way, The Truth And The Light” that somehow manages to reverse all that song’s lyrical polarities while still remaining just as bitter and twisted as ever. By track two, “The Double Spades Effect”, however, it becomes clear we’re in the realms of some top eclecticism – looped acoustic guitar, hoe-down fiddle that recalls David Byrne‘s wondrous “Daddy Go Down” and Ka-Spel’s chant of “Less is more” combining to make something much less atonal than, but just as hypnotic as, the Dots’ very own “Catch a Match…”, before some wonderfully distorted guitar kicks in on the back of some odd noises and vocal fragments. You could dance to it, but it’d be more fun to just sit there and get wankered.
As a whole, this is the most acoustic Tear Garden yet, but if you thought that’d rein in the ensemble’s, and especially of cEvin Key’s, talent for disturbance, you’d be so fucking wrong. “Her Majesty’s Trusted Food Taster” could be Download to start with, that kind of looped “fill up every gap you can with a weird noise” percussion dissolving into a weird, shifting backdrop for one of Ka-Spel’s hallucinatory declamations, including a rather staggering part where he repeatedly whispers “I’m shouting… I’m screaming…”, which works, despite the fact he’s blatantly doing nothing of the sort. And despite a strange tendency to over-pronounce “R’s” on the end of words, Ka-Spel’s still the same lisping prophet of old, one minute spooky, the next pitiable, the next just really fucked-up.
“Feathered Friends”, with its “Switch it off now/Let me sleep” refrain comes complete with some great Space Rock whooshes and electronic tinkling, even as Key does his mad percussion thing in the background. Overall, though surprisingly acoustic, this is yet another top-quality collaboration from two musical genii and their equally venerated band members, warped and pleasant in equal measure. It’s like doing really nice drugs and watching scary movies. And that’s without even mentioning The Clangers…
-Deuteronemu 90210, lover of the Russian Queen-
(A Second Opinion)
Let me just start by saying that I feel Crystal Mass should be a resounding success in absolutely every catagory, in any context, the world over and for all time. Near perfection, in fact, I would add that, yes, near perfection. Very. As a whole, this album is infinitely all things listenable, sing-along-able, memorable, danceable, remarkable. It is silly, it is sad, it is atmospheric and light-hearted, it is heavy. It sounds a tiny bit Eighties, the good parts of that time of music. It is noisy like now and lyrical like a further past. There is just about every genre of music gathered together in the most tasteful ways, arranged and produced and edited wtih all the best of timing and extraordianary engineering.
Nothing is overdone, nothing is so slick as to be sickly. cEvin Key, Edward Ka-spel, Ryan Moore, The Silver Man, Martijn de Kleer, Niels van Hoorn, Russell Nash, Bill van Rooy – a cast of genius players really, so perhaps it is not a wonder… How so many masters could come together and co-operate long enough to make such a wonderful offering is perhaps a mystery or a salutation to the infintie wisdom of the group. Really, I don’t mean to gush but for a whole CD to play out so flawlessly and be enjoyable at the same time, words fail me.
There isn’t a song I don’t like so I will just mention my favourites. ” Lament”, moody, Pink Dotsy, love-lorn. “To Mourn The Death Of Colour” – space Blues maybe, gorgeous transitions and all. “Feathered Friends” and “Her Majesty’s Trusted Food Taster” hold rough edges, weird songs with a bit of that old-school Industrial sound I was getting at before. “The Double Spades Effect” is bitter, traditional, folky, mean-spririted and really makes you want to dance. “Six Of One” makes a tinkly psychodelic magic fantasy with a beat. And I really love “Desert Island Disc”, “Hopeful” and “Castaway” because you can sing right on with all of them. O, hold on, that’s all the songs… I suppose my point is obvious. If not, just get the disc and see for yourself. The Tear Garden rules, today, anyway.
-Lilly Novak-
