It wasn't so long
along Italian Vogue declared Dalston "the coolest place on earth".
Such is the way of these things that title will have passed on to the next
faddiest part of town by now. Not that the vagaries of fashion are of much
concern to The Lucid Dream who rocked up on a visit to East London on Tuesday
and took the stage wearing four different Carlisle United football shirts; a garish colour clash even the most psychedelic imagination would have trouble conjuring. It's
symptomatic of their uncompromising and willfully outsiderish nature.
They've already
released about half a dozen singles and an album, 2013's Songs Of Lies And Deceit, yet with their eyes
always looking ahead they played almost exclusively from their forthcoming
album, The Lucid Dream, which isn't out
for another month. It's a cracking album which opens with two almighty tracks.
"Mona Lisa" sets the tone, an eight and a half minute instrumental of
Kraut rock rhythms, pirouetting guitar shapes, a wall of white noise, phasing
and supersonic (boom) space travel. "Cold Killer" follows in a similar
style, with vocals this time plus stabs of jagged guitar piercing the skin, and two tracks in I'm
already thinking this could be the best UK guitar album since I don't know
when. Brain meltingly good.
The opening moments
of "The Darkest Day/Head Musik" offer respite from the full bodied
attack but with a thump-thumping rhythm it doesn't take long for more guitar to
increase the pace and off into its slipstream the listener is pulled again before
it explodes into a frenzy of feedback with squealing sax a la Stooges Fun House. "Moonstruck", with its
pulsating keyboard lead, was a single that received some radio play although
don't take that as any lessening of the intensity. "Unchained Dub" is
all dubby squiggles with use of a melodica offsetting the dark industrial
metallic scariness. "Unchained" is closer to slightly straighter pop
(all things being relative of course). "Morning Breeze" shows these
are hardened northern lads. Their breeze feels to me like the iciest wind that
would strip the skin off even an Eskimo's face, but after that initial shiver
the track settles down and recalls the gliding levitation Verve did so well
on early singles like "Gravity Grave". Finally "You And I"
is almost a sweet 60s Phil Spector girl group song (okay, via the Mary Chain)
before the almost inevitable feedback finale.
The more I listen to The Lucid Dream the more impressed I become.
Hearing it live it one swoop perhaps some of the nuances were lost a little but
as these tracks become more familiar that'll soon change, although by then
they'll have moved on again. Keep up if you can.
The Lucid Dream by The Lucid Dream is released by
Holy Are You Recordings on 30 March 2015. LP and CD.
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