I’ve been listening to this for aaages, every now and again. It’s at the top of the shortlist for this weeks Bandcamp Friday. Can’t believe I haven’t posted this one before.
It’s quite tail-end 80s-ish, and for once that isn’t a bad thing. The songwriting and the arrangements are just superb. I wish I’d written several of these songs.
I left my rainbow in my pocket
I forgot to pack it away
It ended up in the wash
And now the colours have run
I can’t use that rainbow anymore
I left my rainbow on the ceiling
I didn’t make it safe
Now somebody’s been in
And painted over it
We can’t see that rainbow anymore
I left my rainbow in the sky
I thought it would be safe there
But someone blew a hole in one end
Graffiti’d up the other
You can’t use that rainbow anymore
I left my rainbow in the closet
And I don’t know what you’re talking about
I haven’t got a closet
And there’s no such thing as rainbows
The universe being a vibration, we therefore live in a tune-iverse!
Being deranged is fun. You should try it sometime.
If you don’t rock the boat, how do you know its robust?
I lost the plot, and I would do it again.
I still don’t quite know how to handle Goat, which may be a sign of genius on their part and/or stupidity on mine. I even wrote a 4-part opinion inspired by them not long after I started this blog. And continuing that relationship, I had this album in my Bandcamp wishlist prior to its birth and once it was out, I went to listen to it. After 6 songs, I removed it from my wishlist, but kept it playing anyway. By the end of the album I’d done a 180 and bought it.
What you may gather from that is that the best stuff is on the second half of the album, although my subsequent repeated listening has opened up many of the treasures to be found in the first few songs too. Not surprisingly, it’s the longer tunes that are my favourite; Goatband in particular emphasising a kind of Fleetwood Mac-having-a-jam feel, and is currently up there amongst my favourite tunes of the year.
The styles range from psych-tinged afro-pop to the aforementioned 70s behemoth approach, with occasionally hypnagogic moments to the melodies and regular snake-like rhythms. Indeed, one such rhythm it was that inspired my dive back into the Fela Kuti catalogue a few months back when it was the b-side on a recent single.
The back story might be a load of old bollocks, but the music is often great, as well as fun and thought provoking. I also think it would make a great soundtrack for dancing around campfires, something I need to do more often.
So I listed this in my best of 2015 already, but they really do deserve a post of their own. I don’t think I’d initially planned to include them in said list but played the album the night before I wrote it, and the rest is what happened afterwards.
The album is sung entirely in Croatian, because they are from Croatia. I don’t speak or understand a word of Croatian, but that doesn’t matter. Over the last few years I’ve begun to be more dissatisfied with bands output when it isn’t in their native tongue, because it somehow feels a bit forced. There are exceptions, obviously, but I don’t think it matters if I can’t understand the words. Music has its own meaning, and words sung naturally will always complement that.
So you can bandcamp this if you like and want, but you can also score a hard copy here, on the same label that put out the marvellous Matchess records.
Stylistically, we’re looking at sunny psych-pop, properly blissed out and sun-kissed and everything that implies. There’s a similarity to Brazilian Tropicalia, particularly Os Mutantes, although I may say that because they’re the artists I’m most familiar with from that ‘genre’. They have it down as lo-fi but that may be a function of the fact they recorded it themselves, which has been a lot easier since the digital revolution, since it doesn’t sound all that lo-fi to me. Maybe a ‘sound professional’ would find it so, but I’ve personally become a lot less bothered by such audiophile concerns over the last ten years, ironically since finishing a course in music technology…
Soundbergs 