It’s finally here, in all its tainted glory, streaming filthy banners in the mist, trumpeting across the waves of time like a pirate ghost ship, ringing its mournful bells, warning that it’s time to be boarded and have all manner of mud and dirty joy plastered across your wretched and grateful souls.
In short this was the album they were working on before Tim Smith slipped his moorings and sailed to new horizons. And it slowly ebbed with each new tide into myth, oft mentioned in hushed and reverential tones before the hearths and hearts of many pond dwellers, pursuing rumour and hearsay into legend. Until one day, when Jim Smith decided that the time was right, and the massed ranks of the ABC family and friends decided to set sail anew and, aided and abetted with new crew mates on board, to finish the damn thing off. And here it is. One big album bursting with all the love and respect, compiled over the past couple of years from original tapes dating back to the early 2000’s, Craig Fortnam overlaying brass and string arrangements, while singers Mike Vennart and Rose-Ellen Kemp plugged the gaps that were left.
‘Men In Bed’ is as powerful an opener as you could wish for, with strident chords under a mass chorus with woozy brass counter melodies weaving around a tune reminiscent of early classic ‘Let Alone My Plastic Doll’ (which may have been no co-incidence as, before embarking on this project, they had performed their early back catalogue at the legendary Garage concerts in 2003). The same could also be said for ‘By Numbers’ which is reminiscent of their earlier punk stuff like ‘Gloomy News’.
Obviously Tim is all over this album, even when his voice isn’t. It’s all there in the dense and obtuse words and scatty arrangements. It’s all there in the heart racing starts and stops, and the gloriously epic highs and lows. It’s all there in ‘The May’, which surfs along on a crest of Bob Leith’s furious drums, and Kavus Torabi’s ridiculously fast guitar fills, making you smile with a delicious glee, and I love the way it segues straight into ‘Gen’ from the Ditzy Scene EP, with elements of Beefheart’s Magic Band in the guitar and drums (which I’d never noticed before).
‘Spelled All Wrong’ is a psychedelic masterpiece reminiscent of Spratleys Japs, all dreamlike melancholy, with inspired and beautiful guitar playing throughout. ‘The Blue and Buff’ starts like a Kinks inspired Tim solo piece before Kavus gets his filthy hands all over it!
Get ready for psychedelic overload with ‘Skating’. In fact just overload. I like things good and weird and this really doesn’t disappoint. I don’t want to say too much about it apart from it’s probably my favourite track on the album and for those of you who haven’t yet heard it you really are in for a treat. ‘Breed’ is a beautiful song which sounds more Spratleys than Cardiacs, and, despite the tender care given to it, it really misses Tim and Jo’s voices. Great slide guitar though.
Not every song works and for me that song is ‘Volob’. Whereas lead single ‘Woodeneye’ featuring Mike Vennart, delivers a bouncy, poppy, though still intense, rush, ‘Volob’ lacks any feel, and the song doesn’t really add anything. ‘Lovely Eyes’ works much better as a Cardiacs “pop” song, (even though it hints towards Spratley’s ‘Vessel’) and has some lovely string arrangements.
‘Busty Beez’ is definitely more my kind of thing. All 9 minutes of head swirling majesty, complete with operatic vocals and intense headfuckery rising and rising round and round into the heavens with a glory be on high. It’s one of those songs, like Spratley’s ‘Cabinet’, that you never want to end.
‘Ditzy Scene’ is a revelation. It has always been a stand out song for me, and the EP was a foretaste of this album right back in 2007. All 3 songs appear on this album. The aforementioned ‘Gen’, and ‘Made All Up’ (with added “wooohs”!), but ‘Ditzy Scene’ has been transformed, thanks in large part to the efforts and skill of Craig Fortnam and his orchestral arrangements, into a full-on Cardiacs masterpiece. It reminds me of David Bedford’s work on Pink Floyd’s ‘Atom Heart Mother’. Glorious.
Second single ‘Downup’ improves on repeated listens, and Mike Vennart does a great job, both in translating Tim’s difficult intervals, and investing the song with his own personality. Mention must also go to Kavus for being the rock God that he is.
‘A Roll From A Dirty Place’ starts out like The Who’s ‘Happy Jack’…I kid you not, but it’s not the first time Cardiacs have borrowed from them. It’s perhaps a little too ‘four to the floor’ for me, and the brass is a little silly, and the massed vocals a little tiring. However all these elements put together give it a strange vibe that I don’t think I’ve heard before on a Cardiacs record.
Closing song ‘Pet Fezant’ sounds like a North Sea Radio Orchestra number (but with words written by Tim’s partner Emily Jones), with some beautiful flowing bass and sympathetic string quartet, with a blistering guitar solo, but the best part is the circular extended outro, like a long goodbye to a dear and much missed friend.
I was disappointed to discover that the song ‘Vermin Mangle’ wasn’t included on the album, assuming it to be a taster when it was released to mark Tim’s passing in 2020. However this album is a multi tentacled beast, and I suppose it is a fitting tribute in that, although it isn’t perfect and some of it works and some of it doesn’t, it can’t be denied that everyone involved in it has done so with care and love. It must have seemed an impossible task at times, and many of us guessed that it probably wouldn’t come out at all, but it’s a testament to all involved that it finally sees the light of day in as near a finished form as it can be, and we can finally hear the last pieces of Tim’s glorious puzzle played by the people who loved him. It is indeed a privilege.
LSD will be released on 19th September – pre-order your vinyl/cd/digital copy here.
A series of listening parties have been arranged around the country on Sunday 14th September, with support acts playing live:
Leeds at Hyde Park Book Club ft. The Display Team – details and tickets
London at The Old Library, New Cross ft. William D. Drake – details and tickets
Brighton at Alphabet ft. Kavus Torabi – details and tickets
Liverpool at Leaf ft. a.P.A.t.T. – details and tickets
Cardiacs: Website / Facebook / Instagram / Bandcamp
Review by Andrew Wood
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