-valis Pick of the Week

Released late last year, November methinks, this album has just now come within my Sennheisers's grasp. And though I'd heard about the band as a known quantity I wasn't expecting the end-to-end blisteringly brilliant psychedelia contained within!

The pride of Bristol, England, The Moles! Out on the (fantastic) Welsh label See Monkey Do Monkey, they have this to say:

" Psychedelia has always been something of an opposing force in popular music. The Beatles turned to The Book Of The Dead. The Stones loved us. The Damned moved on from punk and recorded The Black Album. When things get predictable psychedelia returns to tip over the apple cart. Brin, Billy and the gang uncannily emerge from their burrow as everything in music is getting just a tad boring and predictable. The Future Sound Of Ashton may shock those who expect a dot-to-do recreation of the ’60s though. ‘The Combined Force Of An Atom’ is as feral, urgent and angered as Blur’s ‘Chinese Bombs’. And like Damon Albarn, lyricist Mole Brin Davies fully understands the correlation between the disconnected playfulness of Syd Barret and the art school nihilism of the early punk movement. Indeed, there is something very Soft Boys about The Moles’ musical landscape; fractured imagery, nightmarish word play, distinct vocals and an evident debt to 1967 without plagiarising the source material.

Across 15 songs the group forge a distinct sound, relying on simple production rather than the everything-but-the-kitchen sink effect laden approach of the Sgt Pepper school of recording. Billy Fuller (also a member of Beak, Fuzz Against Junk and Robert Plant & The Strange Sensation… yes, ROBERT PLANT) supplies many a memorable bass line whilst Davies’ characteristic English vocals may well leave the same lasting impression as Ray Davies, Andy Partridge, Robyn Hitchcock, Howard Devoto and Jarvis Cocker… even when having explosive US garage-punk/psych edges the forlorn, upbeat, funny and sad music of The Moles is as English as fish ’n’ chips at the end of Weston-Super Mare pier! "

I salute these Hallucinauts: Brin, Billy, Steve, and Dan! Hail The Moles!



You can listen to the archived stream of my show, Trip Inside This House,here; or, hear it this Friday, on The Dead Man's Turn Me On, Dead Man show on Live365, where it's heard every Friday at noon eastern time, as well as Mr. Atavist's Sunrise Ocean Bender show, heard every Friday from 3 to 6am eastern, on WRIR in Richmond, VA.