Grails — Take refuge in clean living
With a larger display of instrumental colour too to fill out and detail their sound and atmospheres. We have on board; synths, piano, guitars, tapes, vibes, harpsichord, harmonium, strings and horns. Opening the album up we have Stoned at the Taj Again which enters with a Morse code tone smothering bass tone which gives birth to wondering bass licked rock groove underlit by Easter promise, with the great Pink Floyd like peaks and valleys with some great bluesy guitar licks and synth swirls and Hoovers in the drifting moments and when it rocks it really ups the pace with great thundering percussion and the guitar having an almost electrified sitar feeling here and there. Later on the 11th hour enters with tribal percussion wondering bass line before droping into a great 60’s Morricone like tinkling sea of harpsichord with surf guitar traces coming out of its edger’s. Lastly the track cleaning living gives birth to a shadowy jazz based air that shimmers with feed back clouds and edgy down beat piano descends, before opening up into closing time bar room piano melodic and rising string beauty thats all still hazed by the odd hint of feedback.
One often says of great instrumental bands that it’d be great to see them write soundtracks, but anything off Take refuge in clean living would rather swallow and take away from any cinematic imagers you could conjure up having the audience focusing in on the music and not the film it self. It’s an accomplished, muilt-layered album that effortless mixers genres and conjures up great depth of atmosphere were every you touch down in its sonic folds.