Monday's Long Songs

Andy Bell's new solo album, Flicker, is already proving itself to be one of the year's best (and his GLOK album Pattern Recognition, out digitally last year has finally arrived on vinyl after a six month hold up at the pressing plant). Flicker is more reflective and guitar based with some wistful songs that deal with looking back, conversations with his teenage self and some that seem to reference the last few years- Trump, Brexit, the pandemic. There are two backwards songs that open its two halves (a la Stone Roses B-sides such Guernica and Simone) and a forwards looking, hoping for better days finale called Holiday In the Sun (not a cover of the Sex Pistols song). It works as a full album, paced and sequenced properly, eighteen songs that come together as a whole. Coming on the back of The View From Halfway Down (and the superb Pye Corner Audio remix EP) and two GLOK albums plus a full double vinyl remix album (not to mention Ride's re- union records) Andy Bell is on a creative roll. I can't recommend either Flicker or Pattern Recognition enough. 

Pattern Recognition closes with a fifteen minute epic called Invocation. I won't try to describe it other than to say it's a cosmische marvel.

World Of Echo has been released as a single from Flicker and with it a new cover as the B-side (I'm not sure it's getting a physical release so don't think technically this counts as a B-side but it's a new song to go with a single so that's a B-side in my books). Our Last Night Together is a cover of an Arthur Russell song and is beautiful, a woozy, FX and atmospherics six minutes forty one seconds of late night music with a reverb laden heartbeat drum underpinning it and some gorgeous guitar/ synth parts. Very forlorn but warm too.