Church Of The Cosmic Skull – Is Satan Real? Seven-piece love cult/Nottingham supergroup who aren’t sure whether to worship at the altar of 70s classic rock or 80s AOR, and often end up doing both simultaneously – Sabbath, Uriah Heep, Fleetwood Mac, Meatloaf, Journey and Bryan Adams are all in the mix. This sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t, but it’s certainly an accomplished album with bigger ambitions than most bands these days: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCQCLe40avs
Arbouretum – Song Of The Rose. Didn’t hear their last one, but this sounds very similar indeed to the album before, The Gathering. Sturdy, mid-paced psych-Americana – nice, but it sounds like you may only ever need one of their albums: https://arbouretum.bandcamp.com/track/call-upon-the-fire
Can – The Singles / Saw Delight. The first is another sneaky promo – A and B-sides of all their singles, mostly fab, though I could do without hearing their version of the ‘Can Can’ again. Quite a few people (at least those who haunt RYM) seem to have a bit of a downer on Saw Delight for reasons which completely escape me, as it’s as funkily mesmeric as the Damo period, if not more so. ‘Animal Waves’ is particularly magnificent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SdH2hCepiI
The Creation – various. Shindig cover stars this month, and yet another band I realised I’d never really heard. Was somewhat chastened to discover that they’d written ‘Painter Man’, though I think I still prefer the Boney M version. Many words written along the lines of “they could have been as big as The Who!” when patently they couldn’t have, because they just didn’t have the songs. They were heavy(ish) for the time and their guitarist used a bow, but hard to get behind the idea of them actually being that innovative.
Live:
Church Of The Cosmic Skull / Crumbling Ghost – Boston Music Room, Tufnell Park. Checked out COTCS on Bandcamp ahead of this gig, but the main attraction for me was Crumbling Ghost, who were excellent. Their doom rock meets trad folk thing still works really well, and they generate some genuine power live, not just in terms of heaviness, but in creating that frisson where elements combine to make something greater than the whole. COTCS were OK, occasionally great, though suffered from a PA that clearly couldn’t cope with anything other than a basic rock set-up.
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