(Meant in a wholly positive, complimentary way.) Not that the Blue Orchids have been studying them I imagine – its just one of those coincidences… although Dr John Cooper Clarke is on the Monkeys AM album and Slum Cavern Jest! ( a very stoned-sounding Orchids mini-album) was recorded at JCC’s home studio. In fact Feather From the Sun is very Monkeys full stop. Bramah is a very under-rated lyricist and some of his best herein are not disimillar to Arctic Monkey Alex Turners. They have a gentle, poetic psychedelic side, and on this album a lot of cynical wit. There’s more to Blue Orchids than the Fall-connection though. I mean that in a good way -as opposed to over-produced, auto-tuned and slick. If Grotesque and Slates were classic(al) Fall in your opinion, then chances are you’ll like a fair proportion of this ragged, rickety, ramshackle album. The Once and Future Thing is basically the album which Fall-fans-of-old who haven’t been digging Mark E Smiths erratic self-parody over the past ten years, have been waiting for. One day perhaps Martin Bramah will read a review of the Blue Orchids which doesn’t mention the Fall. Like the Nightingales, the Cravats, Subway Sect, Wire, Monochrome Set ….the Blue Orchids are another of the old guard from the new wave era, back and going through a Second Prime, despite their years or perhaps because of them. That’s a lie, but a measure of just how great this album is. I had to wrestle John Robb for the job of reviewing this – luckily I won. Where futures and pasts collide… Ged Babey picks up the pieces. ![]() ![]() Brand new album from Martin Bramah and his band of perennial outsiders.
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