At last! The return of the Soft Hearted Scientists! It’s been three years since we last heard from Cardiff’s cult psychedelic troubadours, and seven years since the release of their last album proper, but this month sees the Scientists return with WALTZ OF THE WEEKEND, their biggest and most ambitious studio album yet.
It’s an album swollen with ambition, and bursting at the seams with inspiration. Clearly the Covid lockdown, however inconvenient, (and I, for one, loved it), has left the band chomping at the bit, bursting with three years’ worth of songs, melodies and other creative impulses to get out of their system. And what a torrent of creativity came gushing forth – we all know lead vocalist Nathan Hall is never short of an idea for a good tune, but this album seems to have brought the best out in everyone. Twelve tracks, crammed with eclectic instrumentation, radio friendly kaleidoscopic pop songs, heartbroken ballads and innovative experimentation, packed onto a single CD with a 75 minute running time – truly, our cup runneth over.
Opening track What Grows Inside the Garden enjoys the same dizzying pop-art dissonance of The Byrds’ Artificial Energy, an apt reference because this is a song that clearly belongs in 1967. Likewise, the title track, a psychedelic waltz inspired by a day trip to Tintern Abbey, is as trippy as anything you’ll find on A SAUCERFUL OF SECRETS. Given that I’m name-dropping reference points here, the glorious Rode My Bike put me in mind of The Dukes Of Stratosphears’ manically inventive 25 O’CLOCK album – none of this is to say that anything on this album is derivative, rather, this is an album that can hold its own alongside these classic psychedelic recordings. If you’re a fan of psychedelic music - and, let’s face it, you’re reading this on the Mind De-Coder blogsite - then this is an album that will satisfy that particularly lysergic itch, and you'll be tapping your foot along to it too.
The credit must be shared with producer Frank Naughton, whose wizardry in the studio gives the songs space to breathe so that they never feel cluttered, despite the sheer variety of instruments the’ve managed to lay their hands on – string sections, harpsichords, broken-down pianos, kitchen sinks, and what sounded like an oud, sitars and quite likely a lot more, are all employed to give the songs colour, but they never dominate or feel used just for the sake of it. In fact, the studio is deployed as one more instrument in their sonic arsenal. When Sea Anemone Song, which starts off life as a slightly plaintive ballad disappears into the K-hole, you actually feel as if you’re floating off into space with it. Elsewhere The Things We Make becomes consumed with a dub-laden expansiveness, and Creepers and Vines transforms halfway through into a series of mind-bending transitions, sections, and sound events that will leave your head spinning, while the eleven-minute Lost Mariners is nothing less than a psychedelic odyssey.
The lyrics are cryptically opaque but there’s usually a line or two that tumble forth from the firmament of surreal wordplay which you can clutch to your heart. My current fave: You and I are drinking wine and staring at the garden, appears to be speaking to me on several levels. In fact, I feel as if the whole album has a multitude of layers that will only be revealed upon repeated listens - melodic excursions, exotic instrumentation, a clever bass line, a production trick, a stumbled-upon lyric, an experimental flourish, an on-the-note percussive embellishment - it will take some time to take in the sheer gleeful inventiveness the Soft Hearted Scientists have brought to the table.
It’s hard to pick a favourite track when so much is on offer, but Gadzooks! delivers a bar-room piano that might have been stolen from the end of Tomorrow Never Knows, and otherwise sounds like the semi-legendary and regrettably short-lived psychedelic group (the aptly named) Tintern Abbey having a go at I Am The Walrus - it’s that good. Once again, I’m not making comparisons, but making the case that WALTZ OF THE WEEKEND is as good as those classic psychedelic recordings I really like and rate.
So, from the top: THE NOTORIOUS BYRD BROTHERS, A SAUCERFUL OF SECRETS, 25 O’CLOCK, Tomorrow Never Knows, Bee-Side/Vacuum Cleaner, WALTZ OF THE WEEKEND…they all belong on the same list.
Mind blown.
Available to order, or download, from their Bandcamp page now.
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