THIS record is psychedelic. It’s completely lost in a sort of speed freak Tim Buckley stream-of-consciousness way.
THIS record is psychedelic. It’s completely lost in a sort of speed freak Tim Buckley stream-of-consciousness way.
Well this is something special and no mistake.
Trips and Falls’ third record is a clattering scatterbrained take on all that’s good about independent rock and roll. Pitched somewhere in the rubble-strewn parking lot between the Wedding Present and Swell Maps, and boasting plenty of those arid, slatey chords Laughing Clowns and Josef K managed to prise from their instruments, this is possibly one of the best and most singular records you’ll hear from a band in a long time. Repeated listen just adds to the conviction that this, The Inevitable Consequences of Your Stupid Behaviour, is a modern classic, giddily running with all the best sonic keepsakes from the last 40 years or so, and moulding them into something else again. It’s not just good, it’s brilliant. And just like Josef K, you just wonder about how many cracking records this lot can make, they’re either blessed with powers only given to dudes like Loki or they’re going to give us a few, brilliant works and then fuck off to live on a Polynesian island.
For sure it nabs left right and centre; and let’s not knock that, T.S. Eliot didn’t did he, so when you hear The Wedding Present beaming in from planet 1987, just run with it, ok? It’s just these little asides that bring up Gedge for me; for instance when he sings “I’ll just say” on The Freedom of Homogeneity, or “Oh I know you’re one of us” on Tragically Unhip, it’s ridiculously C86, albeit C86 as it really should have sounded at the time, harebrained, independent, questing, rather than sounding like an audition for Rod Jane and fucking Freddy. I also love the way the whole thing picks up on Laughing Clowns and makes a right good fist of No More Limbo Yay has a great bit where the horns blurt and squeal in a garbage can, Ed Kuepper style. And this LP’s L.O.V.E. love of Arthur Lee is rocking Incendiary’s boat big style; just tune into So, You’re Like Monumentally Busy to hear blessed proof. Yeah!
There’s been a lot of h.o.t.a.i.r. about psychedelia recently, and 2013 was chock full of releases from all these prancing chaps who’d have been better employed as extras in a costume drama. Here there’s none of that careful reconstruction of the Syd Barrett dollhouse, rather we get smashing changes of direction (such as the brilliant middle eight in Destruction Is Always More Exciting) and incredibly creepy balladry in Happy People Scare Me that digs this perverse Gothic Johnny Richman vibe (or a Lord Sutch on mogadon vibe) in spades. THIS record is psychedelic. It’s completely lost in a sort of speed freak Tim Buckley stream-of-consciousness way. No twee arranging the sonic lace curtains for this lot then; no…. if you want a perfect demonstration of Trips and Falls’ psychedelia, you’ve got to listen to that switch towards atonality in Tragically Unhip, a song which looks to keep it together despite the drugs. THAT’s psychedelic, Silver Apples style. And talking of Silver Apples, what the fuck is that spacey organ doing on The Rest Is The Same As Above; it’s as if the ghost of Reginald bloody Dixon’s beaming in on this Arthur Lee style soliloquy. More than that they seem to be channeling Ivor Cutler’s spaceship on Snosberry Beret… Fuck.
Tragically Unhip? Man, I’ll be proud to be that. Time isn’t “after us”, after all. This may say volumes for what I like listening to but for me, this is by far and away one of the best records I’ve heard in like, fucking yonks.