Bipolaroid - Transparent Make Believe
(Surreal But Kind)
Bens Glover (vocals, guitar, songwriter) and Sumner (guitar, keys, production) lead this New Orleans quartet through a series of Floydisms that'll transport your head back to Abbey Road studios, ca. 1967 for a fly-on-the-wall's perspective of those early Barrett-era recordings. From the spot-on recreation of "Astronomy Domine?" in the opener, "Farewell and Godspeed" to the sleepy-voiced witticisms of solo-era Barrett in the perfectly titled "King of Cabbages," Bipolaroid make no secret of their modus operandi at work here. Hell, even the album cover is a photograph of sheep! Fortunately, as Asteroid #4 did on the similarly-infected King Richard's Collectibles, the band use'60s British psychedelia as a blueprint and add their own unique voice to complete the musical canvas. String arrangements (also by Sumner) embellish the otherwise mournful "The Looking Glass" with a "Blue Jay Way" vibe, while the somnambulistic sway of the acoustic "Old Witch" could be Robyn Hitchcock fronting Stone Breath and The Firefly Snakeoil Jamboree.
The spacey "Dimension 5" opens the sound considerably via some extended soloing and could easily be mistaken for an In Search of Space-era Hawkwind outtake and the childlike nursery rhyme of "Madeline" could be the great, lost Ray Davies track, as memorable as any of those early singles ("Dedicated Follower," "Well Respected Man," etc.) collected on the US-only Kinkdom.
Not everything is successful: "Insect Religion" is too rushed, "Sympathy for the Swine" is too disjointed, with Glover's vocals at their atonal worst, and his slow-motioned, outta-my-head-on-'ludes-and-wine delivery on "Galileo's Son" is interminable, but these are minor quibbles on an otherwise exceedingly promising debut from an exciting new psychedelic voice from the Crescent City. I understand they are about to head into the studio to record the follow-up and I. for one, can hardly wait.
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