Tim Jones' guitar surges and shimmies over the tightasanut backing of long-time co-conspirators Reverend Rabbit (vocals and bass) and Paddi (drums), on this the 14th (possibly - it's somewhat hard to tell!) Census Of Hallucinations release since their debut in 2000; although this is their first new release for five years, during which time Tim has been busy with many other Stone Premonitions' projects - check the info link above. Joining the three musketeers of socio-political psych rock is David Hendry (aka Ohead) on very effective textural keyboards. David was the man who put together the band's best of compilation in 2009, and he is the producer here.
The most striking things about this band are the lyrics and the singing, the former by Tim, as are the tunes, the latter by the good Revd. Rabbit. Gunned down by a stream of invective intoned in a peculiar cross between Johnny Rotten and Alex Harvey leaping out at ya from the pages of a Dickens novel, the corporate-slave-shopping culture the vast majority of us are suckered into to a greater or lesser degree staggers battered and bruised like a spent boxer bouncing off the ropes. Not to mention the severe verbal lashings meted out to institutionalised greed and the corrupt and redundant political system it springs from; a system that seeks to impose its values on one and all regardless of culture.
The opening track, Sponge, is a spoken rant by what can only be described as being what Uriah Heep (the Dickensian character, not the band!) might sound like, telling us all that he's in the Government and he's going to take all our money, while being, of course, "very very humble." Following this is the splendid cyclical riff of Third Shopping Mall From The Sun (For Bill Hicks), which quotes a milder part of the much missed acerbic comic's acidicly fist-bitingly funny sketch of the same name. If you've not heard the sketch, Google it - "Peachfish" is all I'll say! But, just so you're in no doubt as to where Tim is coming from: "Might equals right and they're kicking Jesus off the steps of St Paul's. The strong rule the weak and the meek shall inherit nothing." The sad thing is he is of course undoubtedly right.
Relief is granted when Tim changes tack and becomes wryly self-deprecating on Stupid Guitarist, a stoned poem decrying the pointlessness of the ego-driven endless guitar solo over a heavily treated swirling ambient maelstrom of, well not much guitar at all, really, that disintegrates into a mess of George Clinton-like space bubbling with babbling from The Reverend.
The thing that got me into this band and made me buy their very first self-titled album all those years ago was their ability to turn out an almost annoyingly catchy tune that sticks around in your head for days. The song in question back then was Charlatan Express, and you can now get hold of the back catalogue by following the Info link above. Don't follow the links on the band's website as they don't work! New age hippies, eh?! Anyway, the catchy ditty on this new album is The Delivery Man, an ambiguous tale of a modern-day bogeyman, or as Tim puts it: "I'm the silvery man; I add fusion to the illusion, I'm the delivery man; I'll more than even the score with blood and gore." A very alternative space-pop anthem to scare the children!
Tim's guitar style is somewhere between Hillage and Zappa, but with and added helping of some punky aggression, and some of the songs have a big Gong streak going through them. The longest song here, Modus Operandi, is an intelligent anti-greed poem set to some skewed lounge-jazz electric piano that eventually breaks down into fretful ambience and the tolling bell-like chiming guitar, and sounds like the kind of thing Daevid Allen and Robert Calvert might have cooked up after a night of putting the world to rights. That this song is the longest and is atypical of the rest of the album is probably to be expected. Very odd, but quite fetching I have to say.
Tim leaves us with these wise words on Angel Of Light: "The existence of hope is an eternal fact, for without hope there is naught but despair" to the backing of a tune Howard Devoto would have been proud of. An uplifting moment after an album of justified and righteous anger that shows Tim has lost none of his burning sense of injustice which was evident right from the first album, way back in 2000.
A unique combination of agitprop over Gong-tinged space rock and anarcho-punk with a smidgeon of new age folk thrown into the cauldron for good measure, Dragonian Days is a damn fine record by a group I thought had long disappeared over the horizon, along with the convoy. Give it a go!
Conclusion 7 out of 10
(Reviewed by Roger Trenwith - DPRP - Dutch Progressive Rock Page)
http://www.dprp.net