"Graceadelica"
EMI Records
CD EP, CD EM 523,
10" Vinyl, EP 10 EM 523
Hallelujah. Dave Francolini, Laurence O'Keefe and Christian "Bic" Hayes - refugees from the indie/prog/psych collision of Levitation - have quietly regrouped as Dark Star. Listening to their superb debut EP somehow makes the whole painful Levitation saga (all those spats, frustrations and blown hopes) worthwhile. But while Levitation ran, jumped, shook rooms, dazzled, and finally shattered, Dark Star - a power 'n' glory trio that'll rip off your head and return it all lit up and twice the size - take every bit of that energy, aim it, and channel it on course. So what would happen if someone took British underground psych-rock as a foundation, then scanned the heights of British '90s indie for what it had to offer? If they took Primal Scream's panoramic hallucinatory peak, the funky drummer grace of The Stone Roses on "Fool's Gold", Radiohead's lacerating skill and intensity, Spiritualized's on-off blinks of revelation, the waves of transporting guitar frenzy The Verve dealt in when Ashcroft cut out the rock-god schtick, and then fused it all together? And - unbelievably - got it right? They'd get this:
"Graceadelica" itself storms right out at you full-tilt, laced with detail, power and adrenalin quakes. Bic's ghostly guitars are everywhere - chittering in the midground, weaving sensuous smoky patterns and Cocteaus starclusters beyond, sketching spare cascading melodies upfront, then suddenly exploding into your ear in a storm of shocked echo over Francolini's immaculate power-funk drumming. And it's about memory barbed and refracted by mystery: someone stalking the city with a incredible secret to recover. "I must have hit the floor some dark uncertain hours before". "Those half familiar streets were swimming underneath my cobwebbed feet / My aching bones were dry / A skeleton beneath the lead-grey sky / Yeah it's all coming back to me now... maybe too late". Pounding the pavement, finding a pathway to the key. "Feels like I'm walking over water / Sub-human urban messiah / Slow bound for church of the neon / My resurrection's in a glass on the bar...".
The title track carries off the prize for grace and scope, but the whole EP is a fistful of brilliant flares crisscrossed with human fragility. The heavy-metal bullet of "Crow Song" - like PJ Harvey fucking Ted Hughes on Metallica's drum riser - is haunted, a hapless killer's nightmare. O'Keefe's supple, astonishing basswork oozes power, but the song itself is flinching in guilt ("Hope you don't mind, but if I let you in, no-one must know, no-one must know") and the unfolding of terrible rituals. ("You see, he speaks to me in sleep and I don't like what he says. And when I wake I find another feather, just next to me on the pillow..."). On "New Model Worker", Bic's voice is both tannoy sneer and humble plea, the guitars a cataclysmic swing between grinding industrial filth and tiny, tender, praying filaments. "Gears and cycles turning overtime, and a new model worker with too much on the line / There's nothing to decide, there's nowhere here to hide / Just praising the future, becomes what's left behind". "Solitude Song", hovering over a huge depressive plunge, refuses to deny anything - "There's nothing wrong with you / ("I'm sorry, Doctor") / You're acting like a fool / ("Well, someone's got to...") ". Instead, it's braved out, and they jerk your tears out while they howl for strength, "till the clouds go, and we're soothed... / Laugh when it's over...".