Cranes - Future Songs (Instinct/Dadaphonic)
www.instinctrecords.com
www.dadaphonic.com

If you're unfamiliar with the brother and sister team of Jim and Ali Shaw, imagine The Cure fronted by Betty Boop and you'll have a pretty good idea of the sound Cranes make (I'm not joking!) Jim's hautingly atmospheric guitar lines - based on a blueprint Robert Smith laid down on albums like Disintegration - underpin Ali's helium-induced vocals (just about the most unique sound ever squeezed out of a pair of vocal chords), resulting in one of those incredibly strange sounds that fall square under the "love 'em or hate 'em" category. Not surprisingly, Smith remixed the hit single from their previous outing ("Jewel" from Forever), and although his hand is not directly involved here, his presence remains in the spirit of the arrangements and Jim's film noir-ish fretwork. The title track picks up where "Jewel" left off (i.e., it has hit single written all over it), while "Flute Song" adds a nice slinky, sultry, jazzy vibe to an album whose closest sonic cousin is probably Julee Cruise's "Floating Into The Night." As with that album, the cinematic stylings of Angelo Badalamenti's music is adapted into a rock environment to great success.

"Don't Wake Me Up" is a moody, drum 'n' bass, chill-out effort that seems to be all the rage in the UK clubs these days. Elsewhere, shades of St. Etienne, ca. Foxbase Alpha hover over "Fragile," another soft and sexy dance groove undermining Ali's "cuckoo cachoo" vocal, and the gently reflective "Even When," which floats along like a cumulous, cotton candy cloud. The album's final (and finest) track, "The Maker of Heavenly Trousers" combines the muslin-gaused twang of Mojave 3 with some Vini Reilly/Durutti Column guitar stylings and a swaying lullaby melody that's perfect for falling asleep in a hammock in the back yard under a couple of shady trees in the cool, summer twilight. Aaah, bliss! In sum, the perfect album to slap on for some twilight time chillin' after a hard day at the office. In a word: "relaxing."

The Church - After Everything Now This (Thirsty Ear)
www.thirstyear.com

After twenty years and almost as many albums, Australia's finest purveyors of psychedelia return with a record that's as comfortable as sinking into granddad's plush, leather comfy chair. Don a smoking jacket, crack open the good sherry, light up a stogey (or something else), close your eyes, put your head back and float away to Steve Kilbey's trademark stoned vocals, Peter Koppes' crystaline guitar lines, and Marty Willson-Piper's immaculate no-frills fillers. The Church have influenced a whole generation of young, British psych bands, so if songs like "Chromium" remind you of Radiohead or U2, just remember who's copying whom. There are even hints of the dreamy, expansive psychedelia of the great (and recently reformed) Manchester band The Chameleons wafting around these songs. And since I'm afraid people unfamiliar with the band will castigate them for copying the sounds of the aforementioned bands, I want to set the record straight right at the outset. Although, having said that, I'm sure this'll still sell less than a tenth of the units Radiohead, et.al. have been moving lately.

This is a difficult album to wrap your head around upon the first, or even fifth, listen. It isn't toploaded with a bunch of catchy, jingles that'll end up selling cars, trousers, or cruises in a couple of months, and the lengthy songs (most are over five minutes) take their time to develop an atmoshere and ambience that only improves with repeated visits. Like a good mystery that you have to re-read to pick up the clues you missed first time through, After Everything Now This needs time to settle into your brainware. Live with it for a few days. Put it down and come back in a day or two. Certain melodies that seemed to drift by unnoticed will jump out of your speakers; a lyric will assume nuances that seemed trivial; and a guitar line or subtle piano or violin embellishment will all of a sudden seem like the perfect little extra that transforms an average track into a memorable one. The final track, "Invisible" is even a little reminiscent of Luna (ca. Bewitched, particularly its title track), so if you're new to Church-going activities and any of the aforementioned bands excite you, or if you're a fan who's wondered where they've been, you owe it to yourself to check out one of the smoooothest, easy listenin' psych albums I've heard in a long time. In a word: "dreamy."

Malcolm Morley - Aliens (Creo)
www.malcolm-morley.com

From the opening speaker-shattering, bass-thumpin' riffage of "Mighty Sisters," it quickly becomes clear that this is not the long rumored MIA solo album from the ex-Help Yourself guitarist. Banshee-wailing backing vocalists and metalic, techno-cum-Acid House motorik (human) drum machines permeate Aliens and indicate where Malcolm's musical tastes lie today, and show no evidence that he was ever the lynchpin of the criminally underrated Helps from 30 years ago.

The huge pounding rhythms of "The Shade" remind one of some of the recent Julian Cope releases such as Interpreter, and, again, with all the Metal Machine ('80s dance) Music in the background, one wouldn't be too far off suggesting it sounds like St. Julian fronting Depeche Mode.

Sandra Zane's thunderous bass and Theo Brown's hypnotic, programmed drum tracks propel "The Burning Flame" into Big Audio Dynomite territory, while "The Clone" chills out after the bombastic opening trilogy, borrowing its mellow, laidback riff from The Stranglers' "Always The Sun." Morley's marvelous guitar solo illustrates that he's kept up his nimble fretwork over the years, as does the wall-of-sound, aggressive , fuzz-laden solo on "Future City." My favorite track, "Venus Rising," is a splendid pop song which gives a small indication of the direction the LP could have taken if Morley were so inclined. I'd definitely like to hear more material in this vein on future efforts.

"The Crucifixion Area" settles into a funky reggae party as rastaman Marley, er Morley recounts the tale of London's nuclear destruction(?). Once again, Malc's vicious guitar strokings are to the fore. For "X File 301," Morley has enlisted the talents of his former Help Yourself partner Richard Treece (late of The Green Ray, Donovan's Brain, and his own solo debut) to assume the paranoid, schizophrenic personage of small time felon, Jack "Bunny" Lightup, a frightened old man who knows the aliens are among us, but is having difficulty convincing the rest of the world. Now I know how Roky Erickson feels! In a word: techno.

In Gowan Ring - Exists & Entrances Volume One: Vernal Equinox (Private Pressing)

The first in a projected continuing series of flotsam, jetsam, leftovers, demos, alternate takes, live excerpts, etc. from the prolific pen of B'eirth and his stable of woodsprites, nymphs, and potheaded pixies d/b/a In Gowan Ring, E&E is an essential document in the IGR catalogue. Much more than a mere collection of tossaways, IGR cover Vashti Bunyon's "Rosehip November," Mike Heron's "Are We Lost," and Nick Drake's "Way To Blue", sets music to Yeats' "I Went Into A Hazel Wood," and resurrects the traditional tales of "Bedlam Boys," A Spider Song" and like-minded originals to illustrate the wide scope of IGRs influences and the breadth of their individual and collective talents.

Nowhere is B'eirth's devotion to this material more apparent than on the brutally naked honesty dripping out of his version of "Are We Lost," where his quivering vocals break down in the last verse to the point where he can't even complete the track. The lengthy, harrowing "Bedlam Boys" sends shivers down the spine with its eerie, chanted vocals and haunting, minor chord accompaniment.

Usually a collection like this is reserved for an artist who has left us, so it's indeed a rare pleasure that we are blessed with this volume. especially if you subscribe to the theory, as I do, that too much In Gowan Ring is never enough. My favorite track is "Hazel Steps," which one reviewer describes spot-on as "stoned at half-tempo" (a sped-up MP3 version is promised), but this arrangement suits me just fine with B'eirth's cotton-mouthed vocals and John Woosley's "phased Hurdy Gurdy" adding to a most heavenly head trip. Comparisons with early Barrett, Drake, and, particularly Donovan are obvious, but welcome.

B'eirth's "Hazel" trip continues on "Prospecting Hazel Steps," an excerpt from the forthcoming Hazel Steps Through A Weathered Home project, due this Autumn. The sparse, electronic elements of the preceding track are elongated here--as if NASA stuck a microphone on the hull of Voyager One and recorded its travels through The Twilight Zone of outer space. Think of Client/Server merged with the spacier elements of Acid Mothers Temple.

"The Secret Heart," adapted from a track on John Renborne's Ship of Fools LP, brings B'eirth into your living room, sung as it is through his guitar pickup. Yeats' "I Went into A Hazel Wood" is a live recording from Sinta, Portugal accompanied by Michael Moynihan and Annabel Lee on banjo and violin. Its lilting melody marries Tom Rapp to Bert Jansch--in fact, the lyric "silver apples of the moon" was used by Rapp in his tribute to Simeon (Silver Apples) Coxe on his Journal of the Plague Year LP a few years back. Exquisite!

The disk ends with a cover of Nick Drake's "Way To Blue" which was originally recorded for Elsie & Jack's tribute disk, Sculpting from Drake. A sparser arrangement than the original--imagine if Nick saved this for Pink Moon--B'eirth strips the flowing melody away and delivers a syncopated interpretation that renders the track completely his own, almost totally indistinguishable from Drake. Only some type of percussive, metalic swoosh that approximates the sound of a rushing brook distracts from the song's powerful message of aimlessly wandering the earth, searching for the unattainable. Naturally, E&J discarded it, but you can finally discover what would have been one of that tribute's strongest tracks. I'm anxiously awaiting Volume Two in this series, but for now--in a word: wyrdfolk.

Now that've whet your appetite, be forewarned that this was only available in a limited edition through May. For more information, however, B'eirth may be open to suggestions for reprints. Try emailing him at ingowanring@mollymail.com.

The Catholic Girls - Make Me Believe (Skymarshall)
www.skymarshall.com
www.thecatholicgirls.net

Like the Malcolm Morley disk above, this one's been far too long in the making (over 20 years), but The Catholic Girls sophomore effort arrives with little fanfare touting the return of the great power pop quartet from my home state (New Jersey). In the late '70s, a bunch of (Catholic) schoolgirls got together to form Double Cross. I heard their debut 7" on a local radio station, hunted it down and played the heck out of it, egged on by the sudden realization that I used to sit behind the drummer in grammar school! By 1980, following a personnel change which led to my classmate's departure, the girls rechristened themselves to their current moniker and signed with MCA/Universal, who issued their eponymous debut and then sat back and proceeded to fuck up the distribution while The Go Go's and Bangles stole all their thunder. In the ensuing decades, main Girl Gail Petersen moved to California, released a couple of songs under various guises and wrote a vampire novel. Last year, she contacted lead guitarist Roxy Andersen and at a Memorial Day backyard barbecue started jamming back the good vibes. Recruiting a new rhythm section, the Girls hooked back up with their A&R rep from Universal (the mysterious "Archbishop of Rock and Roll") and the resulting EP is available on his imprint. [Actually, it's a full-length, with the songs appearing both in acoustic and full-throttle versions.]

The intervening years have taken nothing away from Petersen's ear for catchy tunes and tearjerking tales that should appeal to teenagers old and new alike. What would the world be like "If No One Fell" in love, she ponders in the opening track, followed by the topical cautionary tale of schoolkids browbeaten into religious ferver, based on the recent Columbine High School slaughter ("Make Me Believe"). "It's Fun (To Be In Love)" floats along on a lightweight pop melody that leads into the album's highlight, "Somebody in the USA," a hard rocking, toe tapping scorcher about realizing childhood dreams of being a star. The raunchy "Young Boys" would land Petersen in jail if the shoe was on the other foot--here, it's simply a raucous party tune of an older woman lusting after the younger members of her listening audience. You go, girl!

All in all, a welcome return by the original hard partyin', queens of power pop. The melodies throughout sound as if they were written yesterday, yet retain all of the aroma of their debut, 20 years ago. If you want to recapture your youth and remember the good old days when The Go Go's and Bangles were all over the radio and blaring from boomboxes all over the neighborhood, pick this up and marvel at the creators of the whole "cute chix with guitars and miniskirts" subgenre that lives once again in the hearts and ears of young boys and dirty old men everywhere. And yes, they do still fit into their cute catholic school uniforms for their concerts. To borrow a phrase from an old Red Hot Chilli Peppers song, "Catholic School Girls Rule!"

The Sandpebbles - Eastern Terrace (Camera Obscura)
www.cameraobscura.com.au

The hits just keep on coming from Australia's finest label, and they kick off their second half-century of releases with the debut full-length from their first homegrown signing. Former soap opera writers ("Neighbours") Piet Collins (drums), Christmas Hollow (bass), and Ben Michael X (guitars) introduce us to their Smokey Robinson falsetto voiced singer/guitarist Andrew Tanner with their version of The Stones "Emotional Rescue": a slow-groover called "My Sensation." Next, it's off to the garage to marvel at Julian Cope twiddling the knobs of his synthesizer ("Out of My Mind on Dope and Speed"), then "Moving To Fast" does just the opposite about halfway through as the bottom drops out for an extended, Dead-like, space jam.

The lads show off their cinematic chops with the short, De Wolfe interlude "One Time At Sundown," which melds into vintage Spacemen 3 territory on "The Big V" (not the Big Audio Dynamite song). "The Sundowner," which previously reared it's somnambulistic head on a 7" EP last year, cops the bass riff from KAK's "Lemonade Kid," drops in special guest (and co-author) Murray Jamison's spacey wah-wah Nord synth, and wraps the whole fajita up in a techno dance drum back beat that all add up to the 21st century's first all-out classic chill out track.

"Charmed" continues the "spot the influence" riffing (this time it's the all-too-familiar drum break from "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida"), but breaks off into a musique concrete assemblage of sound bytes and fuzzy guitars that had me free associating for no particular reason back to Rare Earth's "Get Ready," strangely also a Smokey Robinson song. Hmmmm? A few synthy sucks on the bong bring things to a head and the whole session ends with the director's cut reprise of "Moving Too Fast," which once again finds Thom Yorke and his band of radio heads dropping by for a few hits. A promising debut which finds our Aussie friends wearing their hearts and influences on their sleeves and will definitely appeal to fans of any of the aforementioned space cadets and like-minded cinemaphaeliacs. In a word: chill.

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