As normally odd as ever, this shows the Strangelies of Dr Strangely Strange to have become comfortably quirky in their eighties.

Release date : 11th April 2025

Label : Think Like a Key Records

Format : CD / vinyl / digital

PURveyors of psychedelic lounge

If there were a competition for the longest gap between releases, it is just possible that this iconic band from Ireland might clinch the prize, it being 38 years since these merry pranksters, purveyors of psychedelic lounge music, issued any new. Especially when you factor in it is damn near the original band: Tim Booth, Ivan Pawle and Tim Goulding at the helm. OK, “new boy”, Joe Thoma, is also on board, recruited sometime in the ’80’s, with some occasional extra ballast provided here by Brian Casey, Anthony Noonan and Mary Greene.

You’ll probably need to go to wiki, I did, for the full backstory, but, suffice to say, Booth and Pawle started the band in 1967, Goulding joining a year later, with various other notables recruited as necessary, along the way. Notables like Gary Moore and Gay and Terry Woods, with a young Phil Lynott never that far away. Lazily always grouped alongside The Incredible String Band, in part having a shared connection and involvement with Joe Boyd, in fact there were some parallels, in that their music could be similarly categorised as, largely, acoustic hippy whimsy. Yes, please!

COMING TO LIFE

I am not sure I’d have opened the set with Up With The Lark, a curious piano led construction, that might set a listener into a wrong direction. The weakest track here, it comes to life as a renaissance dance breaks through Pawle’s hesitant vocal, with joyful fiddle and whistle. I make the point, as first moments matter, lest anyone be tempted to give in to prejudice, right there and then. Baby Bunting is streets better, Booth has taken over the lead vocals, with both he and Pawle on acosutic guitars, whilst Goulding is at the electric piano.

Album producer, Brian Casey tackles electric guitar and bass, having played whistle on the opener. Noonan drums and Thoma fiddles, and it is a jolly raggle taggle of a tune, with a distant hit of Bo Diddley in its rhythm, beneath the swirling acoustica. Gorgeous doo doo backing vocals nail it, these coming from Greene and all others present.

Citation Needed

The momentum having pivoted positively, the feelgood wellbeing bonhomie is maintained for Like Water Like Wind. Goulding is now singing, and the unison play between his keys and Thoma’s fiddle is rich and evocative. It seems the title and lyric refer to the conclusion of Omar Khayyám, as mentioned in his Rubáiyát: “we came like water like wind we go.” If all this suggests a time warp back to an incense and hashish scented days of long hair, heads and the Haight, you wouldn’t be far wrong, and I am all for that. Chuck in an instrumental, Sulán, a river in Cork, rather than anywhere with a sultan, and this record feels on a roll. Thoma adds mandolin to fiddle, a soothing wash of synthesised keyboard and the patter of percussion adding reassuring horizons to the piece.

A CHANGE IN DIRECTION

Rosenallis Two-Step offers a change in direction, Hammond and chattering drums the accompaniment for what, very likely, actually is a two-step. Guitars strum and it is a very jugband vibe that is offered, not least with Thoma sawing away with gusto. A full complement of bv’s add lustre, as County Laois gets compared to the Wild West, for which a citation may be needed. It’s another corker, mind, and I’m very much liking this unexpected new flicker of life in a name steeped otherwise in a distant and slightly blurred past.

Drive ‘Em Down flips another switch, for me that is redolent of the Grateful Dead, American Beauty and Workingman’s era, with confident picked guitars and piano, if with Pawle’s wobbly whisper, revitalised since that opener. It rattles along like a tractor on a shroom hunt, and, whoever it is that laughs, just ahead the piano breakdown, well played that man. I’m also wondering how familiar Mike Scott may have been with these guys, as he translocated to Spiddal, mid 80’s, for more room to roam, unless it is all just in the soil.

A Mellotron

Murmuration is more of an old-fashioned, old-timey song, coming, says Booth, to him in a dream about estswhile Strangely, Terry Woods. With echoes of a ramshackle Genesis, Jorma Kaukonen’s exquisite song of that name, it grows and grows and grows. Some school assembly piano beckons in Morning Song, with Thoma on joint fiddle and viola, the two musicians alone. It is a grand and sweeping melody, one to try and contain your thoughts within, thus far. Back In The Day borders just a little too much on twee, but, in defence, it must have been quite a day, and the swift burst of electric guitar, Casey again, near makes up for that, especially when the credits reveal a mellotron was also in use for this one.

Vienna is the final track and it isn’t, silly, that one, however interesting that might be to hear. It is Goulding, alone at a grand piano, and it is straddles genres and expectations equally. Starting with a classical majesty, his right hand can’t resist to roll in some barrelhouse boogie , his left hand then tempted and trying to add some ragtime. It makes for an entirely appealing bookend to this inviting LP. (And, should you wonder, Vienna is his grand daughter.)

Careful with that sleeve…..

As you listen to this record, please, please make a point of reading the sleevenotes, irrespective what else you may be doing with the sleeve, as they make for a lively backdrop to all the songs, with throwback mentions to various characters from the halcyon days of their counterculture. Is there more in their tank, one wonders? If so, crack on, boys, crack on!!

And here is Baby Bunting, track 2 and where the album takes off:

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