Ever heard of Tim Rose? It was he who popularised the folk-rock song ‘Morning Dew’ in 1966, way before Jerry Garcia’s mob, with an edgy, angry blues vocal as fragile as it was powerful. It’s harsh and emotive, with elements of beauty scattered about it. You really need to dig it out. He’s also the guy that inexplicably springs to mind within seconds of hearing Christian Hede Madsen spit forth bitterly over the massive grooves of Pet The Preacher’s second full-length, The Cave & The Sunlight (Napalm Records), and the influence of the vocal style upon these offerings cannot be over-emphasised.
Sub-plots intertwine throughout the album, with inflections of blues and psychedelia looming large. Yet, the tragic beauty of opener ‘The Cave’, the slithering groove of ‘Let Your Dragon Fly’, and the lacerating, muscular riffs and tribal drums of Christian von Larsen on the desert-soaked ‘Kamikaze Night’ are all testament to the rustic stoner charm oozing through the set. It’s an even better experience when that raw emotion shines through: the almost balladic ‘Remains’, complete with a wonderful, whisky drenched slide lead from Madsen amid the gravelly edges, shows just how adept these guys are at penning tunes which marry both soft and hard ingredients whilst sticking to your brain like that bastard bubblegum on the bus seat. As with many stoner albums there are perfunctory moments such as the leaden and unimaginative ‘Fire Baby’ and the occasional pub rock of ‘I’m Not Gonna’; but that storytelling roar that points to a life hard lived and that lead guitar underpin enliven even these tracks with a sense of empathy. The growling bass and exploding swells of ‘What Now’ are a pure delight.
You’ll never want the pulsating ebb and flow of closer ‘The Web’ to end, just as much for the joyous surge of its powerful moments as for the feeling that life will be a little more dull once the album’s over. It’s a chapter characteristic of its book: full of peaks and troughs, yet ultimately euphoric in its doleful nature, this will grow more endearing with each listen.
8/10
PAUL QUINN