My sense that music genres seem to move in cicada-cycles is supported by this album, because a lot of it sounds very Nineties Indie. Some of that is because the track Another Girl Another Planet was covered by Blink-182, but the sound of a lot of the other tracks feels more of that era as well (I always get that confused with Girl From Mars by Ash, which doesn’t help).
Some of that perhaps is due to Peter Perrett’s vocal that has a quality that is both whiny and flat and yet still works. I was trying to work out who it reminded me of specifically, and Rick Witter of Shed Seven came to mind. Perhaps Tommy Scott of Space as well. The music is closer to Shed Seven in style, as well as a lot of other bands around at that time.
There’s a dash of psychedelia and rock, with some great swirly guitars to close the album from Perrett and John Perry on the track The Immortal Story. The two of them join forces for the magnificent twinned solos of The Beast as well, combining great squealy high notes with some dark fuzzy noise. The Beast is one of two tracks with a title evidently inspired by Aleister Crowley, the other being half of his famous declaration The Whole Of The Law. Lyrically, however, Perrett doesn’t lean too much into Crowley; not as much as Bowie does at least. The Whole Of The Law in this case is a love song about going to any lengths for somebody, The Beast is about “the modern vampire”, a temptation that “you can’t refuse” which is apparently about Perrett’s own struggles with addiction.
Other tracks veer from a bit punk to the sudden jazz of Breaking Down, a track that really grew on me because for various reasons I ended up listening to it three times.
I have a five hour Spotify playlist of Nineties Indie, and I reckon you could hide any track from this album in the middle of it and nobody would be any the wiser; I really liked this one, and I think it was fortunate that I had to relisten because some of the less immediately commercial tracks are some great hidden gems. Oh, and for the record you may as well stick with this original version of Another Girl, Another Planet since the cover really doesn’t add anything that’s not already here.
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