Considering the good intentions of experimentation, experimental music can so often be a miserable and brooding affair. I’ll not poo-poo the Sunn O)))s of the world, as such, but there are times at the tail-ends of festivals where watching a bunch of faceless miserablists taking out their existential angst on you isn’t quite what you want.
Don’t get me wrong: I hate Misty’s Big Adventure and one day plan to ram-raid their recording studio with a combine harvester – but where’s the happy medium between meandering hippie bullshit and gloomy soul-destroying dirge-fests?
Well I think I may have found my personal saviour in They Came From The Stars I saw Them; this album comes just in time to ring in a spring more promising than most I can remember, (and I’m talking about weather here, people, nothing deeper than that).
‘We Are All In The Gutter But Some of Us Are Looking At They Came From The Stars I Saw Them’ (great title by the way) is an electro-funk odyssey; an aural trip that’s sometimes engaging, sometimes rambling, but always characterful in a sprawling, spaced-out way. It takes a while for the ear to adjust to their frequency, but as soon as you get there their language begins to make sense.
Imagine Grandaddy as spoilt toddlers let loose in a music shop on Europa, and you’re in the rough area.
The lyrics meander between bizarre, baffling and beautifully uplifting: to some they may cloy, but I find them quite refreshing:
Take ‘Moon Song’: with its arcade machine ping pong sound-effects, deep bass, bold brass and cantering percussion: it’s a joyous, almost pagan, chorus of earnest celestial celebration: “Oh glorious moon, oh beautiful sister in the sky / remember to value what it is to be alive.”
And there’s the reggae-twee ‘Lionel’s Tears’, which collapses into a psychedelic Spandau Ballet tribute, followed by ‘(Down On The Dancefloor) Let’s Make Something R.E.A.L.’, with its cascading brass explosions like rainbow-coloured waterfalls and opening lines: “Look at each other… don’t just stare at the band / Did I ever tell you that you’re so f***ing beautiful?”
Certainly it’s in the midst of all this, in the middle of the really joyous danceable ditties before the imminent freak-out, that the musical minestrone works to its greatest effect. Far be it from me to go to such innovative lengths as to compare a rock ‘n’ roll experience to sex or drugs, but… well, you get the picture.
I haven’t felt this inclined to ingest hallucinogens for some time.
Now let’s find out what festivals they’re playing…
