Special Moves

On 14th April 2001, at Rothesay Pavillion on the Isle of Bute, Mogwai almost made me vomit.

They had already scared the little old ladies manning the bar by opening with a double salvo of the glitch ‘Sine Wave’ from the Rock Action album, and followed it quickly with ‘Christmas Steps’. When the bass kicked in during the latter, those ladies nearly died on the spot thanks to the pure evil of the low-end on that track. Anyway, closing with ‘My Father My King’, their interpretation of an old Jewish hymn, and with me a few whisky and cokes and a few beers to the good, my stomach began to do somersaults when 13 minutes in the volume just increased to a level I have rarely experienced before or since (Boredoms, My Bloody Valentine and Sunn O))) apart). Luckily, dinner and drinks stayed down and I survived until the ferry ride home.

This is the Mogwai live experience. It’s probably the best way to hear Mogwai and it’s a surprise that it’s taken 13 years for the band to release a proper live record, Special Moves. In all honesty, as much as I love the band, they’ve not made a wholly cohesive record since 1999’s Come on Die Young - I could probably add 2003’s Happy Songs for Happy People to that one, but only just. I am, thankfully, happy to report that Special Moves, recorded in Williamsburg, is everything that you could want from a Mogwai album.

It takes tracks from each of the band’s full length releases, meaning that we get the classic brutal ‘Gwai of ‘Like Herod’ and ‘Mogwai Fear Satan’ from the early days, and also the more electronic and slowly-menacing-but-never-quite-exploding tracks such as ‘I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead’ and ‘Killing All the Flies’, from the later years.

It all hangs together brilliantly, slowly building to the middle of the record with ‘You Don’t Know Jesus’, taking a little breather before closing with the still frightening ‘Like Herod’, and ‘Glasgow Megasnake’. You know it’s a special Mogwai gig when the usual set highlight of the former is absolutely destroyed by the latter. It’s a breathless experience.

There’s also an accompanying DVD of the Williamsburg concert, filmed by the Take Away Show’s Vincent Moon and Nathanael Le Scouarnac. The less said about that the better.....but I’m going to anyway. While the music is once again fantastic, Moon ruins what could have been an excellent document of the Mogwai live experience by indulging in moody, grainy, black and white, out of focus, wonky-angled, art-for-art’s sake filmmaking. While the Take Away Shows are often fantastic, capturing bands playing live in out of the ordinary settings, Moon et al similarly wasted a fine opportunity with the DVD of A Skin, A Night, which was meant to document the making of The National’s Boxer album. Instead, we got the same arty nonsense and no insight into the creative process of the band.

I’d recommend without caveats the CD version of Special Moves as it perfectly captures what Mogwai is all about. This is a band that knows how to control the noise they make, and beyond the noise you'll find layers of melody and beauty that open themselves up through repeated listening.

By all means play the DVD, just don’t look at the screen while you’re doing it. Don’t give Vincent Moon the satisfaction or validation.

Missing in Action - Cannibal Ox

Missing in Action could be a semi-regular feature......

Now and again an artist seems to drift from your consciousness due to being absent for a period of time, and you’re shocked when you happen upon their music and think “how could I have forgotten about them?” In the age of MP3 players, Spotify and suchlike, the digital “record collections” that listeners have are so vast that you could go a significant period of time without hearing a particular singer or band.

I was shaken out of an iPod reverie recently by the atonal horn intro to “Iron Galaxy” by Cannibal Ox. The dark rhymes and grimy lo-fi beats were in stark contrast to the glorious sunshine of that particular day, but I was drawn into the dark New York underbelly thanks to the unique skills of Vast Aire:

“I've got that Eve's Bayou sense of touch

So I fought, to touch every hand of a fan to read their thoughts

Battered wives, molested children

Roaches on the floor, rats in the ceiling

Cats walk around New York with two fillin's

One is in their mouth the other, does the killin'”

It’s been almost ten years since Vast Aire and his partner Vordul Megilah (interesting MC names, much more inspired that the usual), with the help of producer EL-P and guests, released The Cold Vein, and there’s absolutely no sign of a follow-up. No confirmation of a break-up, or whether it’s an extended Fugazi-style hiatus (another contender for MIA at a later date) and very little solo output from either rapper.

In 2001, when the top selling albums of the year included gems from Linkin Park, Shaggy and Staind, and one of the top five Billboard sellers was A Day Without Rain by Enya. In comparison, Cannibal Ox were positively revolutionaries.

Joking aside, this was something quite revolutionary in the hip hop world. With only the Wu-Tang Clan offering anything different to the big-pimping stylings of Snoop Dogg, Notorious BIG et al, Can-Ox were truly unique.

Even the source of their samples proved this crew were thinking outside of the box. Across The Cold Vein’s gargantuan 75mins running time we can hear snippets of new wavers Wall of Voodoo, Giorgio Moroder, Philip Glass, Brian Eno, Laurie Anderson and Jaco Pastorious. This was a hip hop album like no other – its centrepiece and meisterwerk was “The F-Word’, a rap about unrequited love for goodness sakes! The F-word in question was in fact “friend”.

The virtuoso rapping of Vast and Vordul was quite something, and married to the wondrous production skills of El-P – he created crackling beats which battled against the lush samples and analogue synth drones – it created an album that’s rarely been bettered in the ten years since. You can hear that pain of the two MC’s throughout the record and it’s hardly a surprise that they’ve struggled to make music thereafter.

In the world of hip hop only El-P’s own crew Company Flow, –thanks to 1997's Funcrusher Plus - the disparate entities of Anitcon and the unrivalled Anti-Pop Consortium have pushed the boundaries of what the genre could really achieve. It’s galling to think that dross from the Young Money label dominates the scene right now. Perhaps The Cold Vein came ten years too early....we could do with another Cannibal Ox right now to shake things up.

Album Review - Tamaryn: The Waves

Is it dream-pop now rather than shoegaze?

For a long time shoegazers were looked on as the scum of the earth. To quote Nicky Wire of Manic Street Preachers “we’ll always hate Slowdive more than Adolf Hitler”. If that’s not enough proof of shoegaze’s evil, pernicious influence, Nicky continues: “Boys and girls, mums and dads, I think you're at the wrong night. This isn't Slowdive or Chapterhouse or another one of those nothing bands, you lazy lazy people.”

I think old Nicky has a point, but only up to a point. It was all going so well when it was just My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive and Ride, but once Chapterhouse, Moose (Moose! For crying out loud...) and Adorable (is there a more twee name this side of Belle and Sebastian?) jumped on the bandwagon it became a case of “more for less”, and then the mid-1990s brought the Britpop years and shoegaze was forgotten.

The rehabilitation started slowly, but around 2004 it picked up largely in no small part to the success of the Sonic Cathedral club night and subsequent record label. What followed was a raft of shoegaze-y bands like The Radio Dept, Asobi Seksu, M83, Team Ghost, School of Seven Bells and many more. The difference this time appeared to be a more joyous, pop rush attached to the overuse of the effects pedal, general drone and guitar overdubs. Hence, “dream-pop”.

The term seems to have captured disparate artists such as Best Coast, Beach House, Grizzly Bear and High Places. None of these bands could be said to be particularly similar in style, other than sharing an ear for a cracking melody. There’s also the noisier end of the spectrum inhabited by A Place to Bury Strangers and the sadly-missed Dirty on Purpose.

All this is a rather long-winded intro to a review of one of the most vibrant albums of the year so far, Tamaryn’s The Waves.

Formed by New Zealander Tamaryn (voice, one name will do) and former Vue member Rex John Shelverton (instrumentation, three names), The Waves is a dusty, atmospheric experience, full of layers of fuzzed-out guitars and drawl-y vocals reminiscent of Hope Sandovaal and even, at times, Siouxsie Sioux.

Tamaryn describes the band as “...atmospheric, emotional and deliberate. It has a big range. But if you're talking more genre-specific, I think that's a little harder because there are a lot of different things involved. A lot of people say shoegaze, a lot of people say death rock with gothic overtones. I also hear dreampop. I think it's a mix of a lot of things. It's taking a lot of things I love and fusing it through my own interpretation.”

While a lot of music in this genre seems on the verge of floating away into the air, much of The Waves is given a dynamic, solid body by the low-end sounds of the bass and, possibly, programmed drums. There’s the guitar-laden pop rush of “Love Fade”, and the more sedate and ethereal “Choirs of Winter”, and Tamaryn sound like a band confident in turning their hand to whatever mood fits.

Could be best as a headphones record, but play the album as night falls and you might experience the gothic world that Tamaryn and The Waves inhabits.

All Delighted People

It’s okay people, stand down. Sufjan Stevens’ existential crisis is over.

Out of nowhere, following sound collages and multimedia paeans to disasters in architecture, everyone’s favourite God fearin’ troubadour is back with an EP to remind us why we fell in love with him in the first place.

All Delighted People has been described as a “dramatic homage to the Apocalypse, existential ennui and Paul Simon’s ‘The Sounds of Silence’”. What’s Art Garfunkel ever done to upset Sufjan? Anyway, it’s a return to the Sufjan Stevens found on the 50 States project and perhaps the greatest album of the last ten years, Seven Swans.

At 60 minutes, it’s hardly worthy of the title “EP”. Based around two versions of the title track, and the 17 minute closer ‘Djohariah’, it mixes the more “traditional” work of Stevens found on Illinoise, Michigan and The Avalanche with the glitch electronica of ‘You Are the Blood’ found on the compilation Dark Was the Night. Lyrically, it embraces the religious imagery found on Seven Swans and this seems to be hinted at in the title of the EP. For “delighted” read “enraptured”, or even The Rapture. Perhaps this much talked about crisis of confidence has sent Sufjan Stevens back to the semi-comfort he finds when singing to, or about, God.

The EP opens with the original version of ‘All Delighted People’, amounting to about four songs in one. It begins in gentle style, with Stevens not wanting to be alone, and warning of an impending end:

“And I took you by the sleeve
No other reason than to be you leading man
And you woke up with a fright
Our lives depended on the visions through the night
All we had always, all we had always wanted to before”
The hurricane inclined us, grappling on the floor
All delighted people raise their hands.”

There’s reference to the storm within one’s self, and the more traditional, but it’s clear that these are the end of days. The song moves to a magnificent climax, choirs of voices and instruments reaching a crescendo. It’s the most ambitious that Stevens has sounded, there’s so much going on in there.

As this is a digital-only release at the moment, it’s hard to know who else contributes to this EP, but I’m sure I can hear the distinctive soprano of My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Wordren in the choir of voices.

The “Classic Rock” version of the track is more straight-ahead Sufan, and can be filed alongside the alternative versions of ‘Chicago’ found on The Avalanche. Lots of banjo and brass, almost Sufjan-by-numbers.

Moving on, ‘Enchanting Ghost’, the gorgeous ‘Heirloom’ and the creepy/beautiful ‘The Owl and the Tanager’ all reference religion, death and spiritual dilemmas. It’s the slower moments on the EP that really stand out and none are better than ‘Arnika’.

That track begins detailing what seems to be the day-to-day machinations of a married couple (“Bruno, your wife shakes her bedclothes as she makes up the bed”) and then detours into what might be the most personal lyrics Sufjan Stevens has ever written:

“I’m tired of life; I’m tired of waiting for someone
I’m tired of prices; I’m tired of waiting for something……”

Stevens’ voice sounds at its most exposed, backed with faltering guitars (the rest of the EP sees his best work on the axe to date) and he seems close to breaking as the song climaxes:

“No I’m not afraid of death or strife or injury, accidents they are my friends.”

Closing with the 17 minute tribute to his sister, ‘Djohariah’, Stevens pushes the boat out with psychedelic guitar solos, horn breaks and what really sounds like something that Parliament might have come up with if they had a penchant for folk music. It actually acts as something of a companion piece to Seven Swans’ ‘Sister’, albeit extended to over twice the length.

All told, it’s a thrilling return to form and completely undeserving of this hatchet job, hastily-prepare by Drowned in Sound. With a tour scheduled for later in the year, and an LP with The National mooted, it’s great to see Sufjan Stevens back and sounding as good as he does.

Is this the greatest song ever written about orange juice?

Courtesy of renowned quantum physicist Dr Richard P Feynman:



Man, I want some of that orange juice!

Mark Kozelek - a retrospective

July this year saw the release of Admiral Fell Promises, the third studio album of original material from Sun Kil Moon, ostensibly the front for the latest musical offerings from Mark Kozelek. This time around, Kozelek threw us all a curveball as he ditched the backing band for nothing more than a nylon-stringed classical guitar and his distinctive, multi-tracked voice.

And it’s brilliant. But how did he reach this point in his career, and how has Mark Kozelek managed to keep it together for the past 20 years or so? Is it the case that the song writing in the early years was the release on the pressure valve that we often need in life? Does the shift to writing about people and places mean that he’s comfortable with where he is now, or was that always the case?

Back in 1992, 4AD released what’s really a set of demos named Down Colorful Hill by a band called Red House Painters. Made up of Kozelek, plus Anthony Koutsos, Jerry Vessel and Gordon Mack (Koutsos, Vessel and Phil Carney still appear live with Kozelek as Sun Kil Moon) this is where the journey began. Even back in those early days, Kozelek wasn’t afraid to let a song last as long as he felt necessary. Down Colorful Hill begins with “24”, a 7 minute song about being scared of turning, yep, 24:


“so it's not loaded stadiums or ballparks
and we're not kids on swingsets on the blacktop
and i thought at fifteen that i'd have it down by sixteen
and twenty-four keeps breathing in my facelike a mad whore
and twenty-four keeps pounding at my door
like a friend you don't want to see”

The sound was, to an extent, typical of 4AD at that time as there’s something atmospheric and ethereal surrounding the melancholic (acoustic) guitar workout that the band became known for. This was followed by the 9 minutes of pain and loss titled “Medicine Bottle”, which became a template for RHP sound. From this early point it’s clear to me that Kozelek is releasing something out of himself by being this starkly confessional:

“the hurting never ends
like birthdays and old friends
we forget what is flesh blood and bone is human
turning phone lines to airlines
unwilling to face
the love is found on the inside not the outside
and like a medicine bottle
in the cabinet i'll keep you
and like a medicine bottle
in my hand i will hold you
and swallow you slowly
as to last me a lifetime...”

Whether it is a song about being in trouble with the old booze and pills, or whether it’s a metaphor for being addicted to being with a lover is something we can debate, but there’s no doubt the feelings are real.

The one minor quibble with Down Colorful Hill is that the space-y sounding production doesn’t quite fit with Kozelek’s own production values on subsequent releases but, as a statement of intent it’s quite something.






1993 saw the release of the career-defining – some might say career high – of Red House Painters, also known by the title Rollercoaster due to the sepia-toned cover art. Produced by Kozelek, it’s an album of epic ambition at 74mins in length, but more importantly it’s epic in spirit and songcraft. Again, nakedly personal lyrics are to the fore alongside beautiful folk, pop moments, the classical guitar stylings mentioned in the opening to this post and strange experimental drone/dirges like “Funhouse.” There’s breezy moments like “Grace Cathedral Park”, a personal favourite of mine, and the record also sees the first appearance of Kozelek’s long-term muse and ex-girlfriend Katy (more of which later) in, of course “Katy Song”:


“you walked awayand left a bleeding part of me
empty and bothered
watching the waterquiet in the corner
numb and falling through
without you what does my life amount to?”


Kozelek has acknowledged that this album is seen by many as a high point, but has admitted he’s not keen on revisiting the time spent recording and producing the record, with only a few songs still played live today. Clearly a difficult record to make - and listen to at times - it’s no surprise then that an artist wouldn’t particularly want to spend time with old acquaintances like that.




Only a few months passed before more songs from that recording session surfaced as Red House Painters II, or Bridge, as most people know it, again because of the artwork. It’s more of the same as found on Rollercoaster and suffers slightly for that, but we do hear a lighter touch in RHP style as found in the delightful “I Am a Rock”, a cover of the Simon & Garfunkel song, and an interesting take on “The Star Spangled Banner”.



It wasn’t until 1995 that we heard from RHP again, and the warmer, welcoming Ocean Beach, an album full of bucolic folk, but with those epic excursions Kozelek was becoming famous for. The biggest change was a drop in the drone found in songs like “Funhouse”, and the album benefits from Kozelek finding his niche behind the recording desk, and from beginning to muse on place, as found in “Brockwell Park” a paean to a night in London....without Katy?


“if the days weren't so precious
and no worlds where shorted wires had kept us
things would be better than this
there's an angel by the ocean i miss
and trips on the train
before our lives changed...”



Kozelek sings of being away from home, distracted away from the celebrations in the park, thinking of someone on another continent. “San Geronimo” is another which talks of missing someone or somewhere


“somewhere up fifteen miles
sifting through crackling vinyl
lost memories of my you
thare coming into view
between lost hills divide
quietly we sleep inside
lost summers of my youth
i spent them all with you..... weekend in san geronimo
love how the starlit skies show
weekend in san geronimo
sentiment within me glows”



While the shift to places and memory in songwriting has taken place, there’s still the personal present in the lyrics, but Kozelek’s writing on Ocean Beach seems more comfortable with addressing these issues, there’s even a small change in voice, a slight deepening of tone – he’s not 24 anymore of course.


1996’s Songs for a Blue Guitar is where we find Kozelek and co. first embracing the electric Crazy Horse-style soloing that peppers the later work of Sun Kil Moon. It’s a change in direction that no-one expected, and also saw the beginning of Kozelek’s love of cover version, reworking songs by Yes, Wings and The Cars in his own inimitable style.


This is the Kozelek that I love best, still indulging in the lovely folk music that has peppered his career but expanding into electric, heavier areas. Unfortunately, this was the last that we were to see of RHP until 2001. The restructuring of major labels and indies in the late 90s claimed a lot of casualties, and the last RHP record Old Ramon didn’t surface until 2001. By then, any momentum the band had was lost due to label machinations. It’s hard to see who is to blame – 4AD, Warners, or just the whole machine?


An RHP retrospective was released in 1999 (my first introduction to the band), but Old Ramon was worth the wait, one of those “lost classics” people talk about when discovering some dusty old tapes in a record company’s vault. It’s very much in the vein of Songs... containing the same mix of folk and Crazy Horse-ness, but with songs written for Kozelek’s cat (“Wop a Din Din) there’s certainly a lighter mood present:


“She's got big green eyes
And a long Egyptian face
She moves across the floor
At her own pace
When I'm here in bed
She'll jump up on my chest
And when we lock eyes
there's so much love I wanna cry.”


But that was it for RHP. The turn of the century saw Kozelek make a solo break for it, releasing Rock N Roll Singer. Fully embracing his love of cover versions and releasing his inner rock god, the album high points were lovingly crafted covers of three AC/DC tracks. This experiment was followed through to its natural conclusion with 2001’s release of What’s Next to the Moon, a record consisting of beautifully re-imagined Bon Scott era AC/DC tracks.

Whether this was simply clearing the decks for the next phase in Kozelek’s career, an example of someone simply having fun with their career, or an avoidance of the personal is up for debate, it seems to be an aspect of his output that has stayed the course, and it should be welcomed. Kozelek himself has said these were easiest and most fun of his records to make.


In 2002, Kozelek formed Sun Kil Moon with long time bandmate Koutsos, Tim Mooney and Geoff Stanfield. Jerry Vessel also contributes. In a way, this was RHP in all but name. Throughout Kozelek’s career he has been the one to write the songs, produce, and direct the players – it’s only where he takes it from album to album that differs. So, Kozelek makes the point that it’s only the name that really changes; even the personnel pretty much stays the same.

But 2003’s Ghosts of the Great Highway is possibly the best of Kozelek’s career to date. It’s an expansive record, layered in desert dust, electric, countrified and simply terrific. This is the point where Kozelek adds people to the places he’s always written about. Three songs are named after boxers (he’s a fan) and one after Judas Priest guitarist Glenn Tipton. This opening track, “Glenn Tipton”, veers from singing about boxers, movie stars and old school pop crooners to tales of death, murder and loss. The thunderous “Salvador Sanchez” is an album highlight, Kozelek singing of loss once more, but this time of the loss of a potentially great Mexican boxer:

“Salvador Sanchez arrived and vanished

Only twenty-three with so much speed

Owning the highway

Mexico City bred so many

But none quite like him sweet warrior

Pure magic matador.”

There are other songs of love and loss on this great album, with “Lily and Parrots” naked and forthright in the feelings it expresses:

“you are my love

i hold you above

everything and everyone

yeah everyone everyone.”

These songs are made all the more sad in retrospect due to the death of Katy, Kozelek’s muse, in 2003, lost to cancer at the age of 35. The songs on the album were written before her death, but Kozelek would address this later.

2005 saw the release of Tiny Cities, a covers record this time made entirely from Modest Mouse songs. While it’s an interesting record, it never really connects for me and seemed a stop-gap release. By this time, Kozelek had started his own record label, Calo Verde, and gave him the space and freedom to allow him to get such records out to the public.

As someone who has always written about sadness, loss, and love, Kozelek was never likely to shy away from facing up to the death of Katy. 2008’s April is the album that stands as a tribute to Katy. It’s an unflinching record that faces head-on the loss of a loved one, and Kozelek admits that he thinks of her every single day and finds memories of her on every street corner in San Francisco.

It’s not an album that I can say I “enjoy” as such, but the scope and ambition and love and passion that fills every note of every song is something to be admired and respected. It’s such a heavy – in the emotional sense – record, with only rare excursions into the full-band rock outs found on Ghosts. It opens with “Lost Verses”, and sets the tone perfectly:

“I see you well and clear

Deep in the moonlight dear

Your radiant august eyes

They are the suns that rise

They are the light that blinds

They end these lost verses.”

“Lucky Man” is a song that talks of many places, from Ohio to Spain, as if Kozelek is on a search for his lover, and ends with this:

“Woken up to this new April’s sleepy gray skies

The rain has swept the dust that left, the gutters rise

The fog it spills into the hills, crawling out East

The windows weep, beside me now though she sleeps and I

Now have I found her.”

Only to lose her, sadly. “Tonight the Sky” tells the story:

“I met my fallen Angel one last time

I promised always through me she would shine

I held her hands, I sunk into her heart

Til powers unrelenting, pulled us apart..... Tonight the skies

Are open for you

Mountains and big clouds

Divide us in two.”

It’s heartbreaking from start to end, but as Kozelek has said, “the timing was right”. It’s hard to put into words what Kozelek must have gone through to get this record out from his heart, but I can only admire him for making something which stands as a beautiful tribute to a lost love.

This brings us back to the beginning of this article. Admiral Fell Promises is a result of Mark Kozelek wanting to make a record where he sang and played as beautifully as he could. As a result, a full band sound might only have muddied the waters around him, so it was just Kozelek and his classical guitar. And what a treat that turned out to be. Each song becomes a virtuoso performance, resulting in numerous style and tempo changes – even within the same song. Again, places are to the fore, with “Alesund”, “Third and Seneca” and “Bay of Skulls” the standouts for me.

It’s much less heavy-going than April, and certainly doesn’t seem to be a particularly “sad” album. Who knows where next for Mark Kozelek? I think the song writing did keep him balanced in those early Red House Painters days, the palette got a little brighter when singing of loss and love through other people and other places, but Katy will always be with him in some form. Whether electric or folky, Kozelek is never dull, and as for whether he’s comfortable with where he is now, I’ll leave him with the last word:

“Is there anything else i could see myself doing? Not really. A few years ago, a girl in Ireland asked me. "Mark, what is your dream?" I just told her I was living it. It’s true. I'm basically living a very close version of what I was always working towards, so I can't complain.”

Album Review - Blitzen Trapper: Destroyer of the Void

Daytrotter has a lot to answer for.

Ok, so it's great to have a website where you get free downloads of live sessions from a wide variety bands, and there's nice artwork and nice things to buy. But there's always a downside. And the downside is.......folk rock.

For every great session by The Antlers, Akron/Family and Magnolia Electric, you get one from Benjy Ferree, Margot & the Nuclear So and So's (Worst. Name. Ever. What's with the mix of '&' and 'and'? Jeez.) and The 22-20s. Ok, they're not folk rock but they were rubbish trad blues-rock when they split up in 2006, and they're not any better now. In fact, they might be worse. Come on fellas, your last album wasn't even good enough to be released in your own country (according to Wiki). Know when to stop.

Anyhoo, the point was that Daytrotter are a bit top-heavy on the easygoing AM folky stuff. What is the folk rock equivalent of landfill indie? Cornfield folk? Wide open road rock? This prevalence of middle-of-the-road music seems to have infiltrated Blitzen Trapper.....

In between the release of Wild Mountain Nation and Furr, something changed with the Trapper. Out went the sci-fi sounds, the punk jams like 'Devil's A-Go-Go' and the strange prog excursions and wig-outs. In came Bob Dylan and his (The) Band, and mellow times ensued. The link? All those Daytrotter session BT laid down that were heavy on the acoustic side.

Obtusely, Destroyer of the Void does in fact begin with the conceptual, proggy title track - a rollocking good intro - but then meanders into the album equivalent of middle age. Sure, there are lovely moments such as 'The Tree' (with Alela Diane - I bet she's been on Daytrotter) but generally this floats along just so.....inoffensively.

To be fair, the execution is flawless, it's just that Blitzen Trapper are less of a band minus the psych moments. If this was a review that went with stars out of five, it would get 2-3. I hated that in magazines in my younger years. Can I really waste ten quid on a 3 star review? It could be average.....

...and this is what Destroyer of the Void is. Average.