Mr Solo
Outstanding Records
I remember the first time I heard Pink Floyd’s second album, ‘A Saucerful of Secrets,’ having drunk a bottle of vodka, a quart of whiskey and opened a sacred bottle of household Courvoisier. It was a defining moment; a moment when you wish you were tripping off your nuts, instead of drooling like a tramp on cheap vino. The story goes that on the final track, the only track featuring frontman Syd Barrett and the last track he performed with the Floyd, the acid-freak invited a Salvation Army Band to walk into the studio mid-way through. It’s all perfectly captured on record, on the legendary ‘Jug Band Blues.’ Sadly, such tales are cast aside like wank-socks in the vault of music history; lost times of trippy psychedelia and quintessential Britishness [sic], locked away with the asphyxiations and free-love fucking on the riverbed. But STOP PRESS: Mr Solo’s debut album, ‘Wonders Never Cease,’ has opened the vault [if only ajar], and pulled out the treasures of yore, mixing and blending and mashing them together in a beautiful/haunting musical collage (depending on how many tabs you’ve dropped). ‘Going Up In The World’ is a rarity, a track about the shit and strife of life, with echoes of 60s psychedelia, delivered in a Donovanesque [sic] baritone that is anything but depressing. ‘Astrology’ is a fuzzy, electro-rock space journey that would garner a wink from the odd eye of Bowie; whilst title-track, ‘Wonders Never Cease,’ climaxes with a big brass band, ‘Jug Band Blues’-style moment. And here’s the thing: despite the diversity; the range of influences; the different methods from track to track that make this album so good, it’s the strain-of-conscious-free-flow of Mr. Solo’s very British lyrics that make it such a prize. DD
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