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Featuring members of Trans Am, Royal Trux and Six Finger Satellite, this formerly instrumental outfit's seventh album has all the echo-laden ambience and spunk of a bunch of young early 70s upstarts hammering out funky riffs on a Sunday afternoon, perhaps fresh from the Isle of Wight festival. After the acoustic folk guitar and field recording intro mislead you up the garden path, the garage doors swing open to the Zeppelin-esque opening of Recital, the tongue-in-cheek Plant-like delivery and frantic drumming intact. The bluesy swagger of Hot continues the nostalgia trip with its funky figures and twin vocal, noticeably absent from the following two-minute instrumental with the three-minute title (Failure First Time Round Traces the Channel of the Hidden Golden Fleece). The two lengthy workouts Golden Judgement Special and Army Worms trade the bluster of those early tracks for extended, slow-building grooves, the latter's repetition of two overlapping, less-than-memorable guitar 'licks' eventually burrowing its way, bereft of rhythm section into the recesses of your brain. The Sparklehorse dreaminess of Winter Blue then brings some soothing relief, before the eponymous closer pummels its well-chosen single chord into submission.

Matt Dornan
CWAS #6 - Autumn 2000

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