Aliens: Luna

ALIENS: LUNA (2008)

1) Bobby's Song; 2) Amen; 3) Theremin; 4) Everyone; 5) Magic Man; 6) Billy Jack; 7) Luna; 8) Dove Returning; 9) Sunlamp Show; 10) Smoggy Bog; 11) Daffodils; 12) Boats; 13) Blue Mantle.

I would like to be able to put the «rushed» tag on this record (in the 2000s, normal people do not release one new album per year, giving a lengthy, ample, modest, and politically correct chance for an army of underdogs to wash them out of existence instead). But Luna does not feel rushed. It feels very much like the proper, expected, surprise-free follow-up to Astronomy For Dogs, yet one that consumed just as many creative forces as its predecessor.

It is also more difficult. This time, the Lone Pigeon has steered clear of enticing commercial book­marks. The album's single 'Magic Man' (nothing to do with Heart) is less immediately stun­ning than 'Set­ting Sun' or 'The Happy Song', and it is stuck in the middle of the record where its catchiness has a psychological chance of remaining unnoticed. Elsewhere, we have plenty of nu­m­bers that break the eight- or ten-minute mark, not always with good reason, and more splurges of moody psychedelia that will only affect those in the proper mood. The proper mood may in­volve many things, from returning home at 5 AM after a serious night on the town to having injected the latest world news on TV, but there is no way Luna can be appreciated regardless of the shape you're in — which explains the wildly different pool of opinions that exists on the al­bum, and The Aliens themselves.

Fortunately, they caught me in one such mood, and, in this mood, Luna became an experience even more moving and powerful than Astronomy. Of course, like the former, it is utterly deriva­tive. Ghosts of the Beach Boys flutter all around the place, as does the ghost of Syd Barrett and the Small Faces and, perhaps, even Neil Young ('Boats'). But this is the default situation; were it otherwise — were their influences impossible to pinpoint — you would not be reading this, since I would be too busy looking for my detached jaw rather than writing it. The point is, they integ­rate all these elements so nicely that the ensuing psychedelic stew creates its own version of a Won­derland, dense, majestic, beautiful, and one in which getting lost is not so much a possibility as it is a bare necessity.

Surprisingly, only two songs speak to me on a «gut» level. First, there is the experimental perfec­tion of 'Dove Returning', a soft, slow, dreamy Floydian shuffle whose hushed vocals very soon give way to a series of solos (guitars and... phased electric pianos? Or more guitars with crazyass Adrian Belew-style processing?) that go for the good old feeling of catharsis; second, the dry, painful crackle of the Neil Young-ish 'Boats', brutally kicking the mainstream ass with its howl­ing riffage and soloing. These are the ones I fall for very quickly; they are also, however, the least interesting from the experimental viewpoint — if you know Weld, you know this.

Those other ones I find hard to talk about, because they form a wild jungle which takes time and better skill than mine to pull apart. The long songs may be hard to tolerate, but they deserve their length: 'Bobby's Song' alone has about ten or fifteen different melodies crammed into it, from drunken gypsy dance to art-rock chorales, to bouncy Brit-pop to electronic collages. And not many musicians these days, outside of the Flaming Lips, can build up such an impressively hea­venly wall of sound as the Aliens manage on the closing 'Blue Mantle'.

In short, if you are a grumpy, but romantic old-timer yearning for the return of the Beach Boys, but insulted at the frequent comparisons with Animal Collective (because Brian always had the good sense to stay away from that electronic crap etc. etc.), Luna is the album to get. And if it does not matter who you are, it is still one of the most important and successful psychedelic al­bums of 2008, as little as that suggests. Thumbs up.

Aliens: Astronomy For Dogs

ALIENS: ASTRONOMY FOR DOGS (2007)

1) Setting Sun; 2) Robot Man; 3) I Am The Unknown; 4) Tomorrow; 5) Rox; 6) Only Waiting; 7) She Don't Love Me; 8) Glover; 9) Honest Again; 10) The Happy Song; 11) Caravan.

Among the founding fathers of The Beta Band one used to find musician and composer Gordon Anderson, a fully active member right until the recording of the first of the band's three EPs, upon which he left the band due to health conditions. Upon recovery, it was already too late to come back, so he bitterly rechristened himself «The Lone Pigeon» and began recording critically ac­claimed and publicly unknown self-produced and self-released solo albums. Most probably, he would still be as lone as ever, if not for The Beta Band's eventual dissipation — upon which two unemployed members, keyboardist John Maclean and drummer Robin Jones, not wishing to till the earth or sell car polish for the rest of their lives, suggested a reunion with Anderson in order to explore their destiny a bit further.

Calling themselves The Aliens was perhaps a little too far-fetched, because the music they set out to create is even less whacked out than The Beta Band's. Had Astronomy For Dogs come out in the era of Sgt. Pepper and The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, they might have succeeded in blowing everybody's minds to the same degree. As it is, it merely feels like a tribute — a sincere me­mento, dedicated to the 40th jubilee of both these albums; and the name of «The Aliens» feels like a carnival gesture, much like XTC's alter-ego of «Dukes Of Stratosphear» in their own time. When the carnival is over, everyone just goes home.

However, as a tribute, Astronomy For Dogs is a perfect success. Except for the final psychojam of 'Caravan', stretching well over twelve minutes, the tunes are big, jangly, shimmering slabs of psychedelic pop, drawing upon the juices of not only early Pink Floyd and the Beatles, but also the Moody Blues, the Byrds, Love, and various other minor British and American art-rock bands of the era. No fan of those styles will be disappointed, or, at least, feel entitled to say that these guys do not know how to recreate those vibes with perfect precision.

But at the same time, Astronomy is a difficult record. It is skilfully bookmarked by two lively rockers — the ecstatic 'Setting Sun', steeped in screeching guitars and garage rhythms, and the psycho-bop of 'The Happy Song', whose '1-2-3-4' count at the beginning is clearly an homage to 'I Saw Her Standing There' but whose happy-happy-happy melody surely implies a reverence for substances that began to influence music a few years after 1963. These two songs are immediate­ly memorable and good proof of Anderson's songwriting abilities.

The stuff in between, however, is far less trivial. Most of the songs are long, ranging from five to eight minutes, and there is a lot going on there. Arrangements are dense, mostly guitars and key­boards with few extraneous instruments, but lots of those; sections are generally multiple, with time signature changes all over the place and constant recurring motives (such as chants of "we are The Aliens..." and "I am the robot man...") — and it does not trouble them at all to go from Western to Eastern modalities within one song, or to incorporate some very modern electronica-based parts when they feel the need ('Rox' — all of that and more). A song may start out in a music-hall Ray Davies style, transform into a barrage of 'Astronomy Domine'-type noises in the middle, and fizzle out as a madhouse mantra at the end ('Glover'). And, as 'Caravan' shows, they do not use song length as a tool for solidifying their grooves; they use it as a pretext to string to­gether a cartload of half-finished ideas.

All this means is that a serious judgement of Astronomy For Dogs (is it just a tribute? is it enti­rely derivative? if yes, does this mean it is not a classic? if no, what is the real depth of its artistic vi­sion?..) cannot be pronounced quickly. It has so much going for it, so many disparate elements synthesized in one barrel that is bursting at the seams, that it might be necessary to memorize all of it before one can answer if all of these elements really deserved being put in that one barrel — at which point, most likely, the answer will already be bound to be positive. Maybe «The Lone Pigeon» is simply indulging in nostalgia rather than continuing the naïve explorations of his Six­ties' idols; that is not for me to decide. But even if he is, he swarms us so much with all the side products of this nostalgia that the very process of arranging them on your own brain shelves will keep you up for a long, long time. And what is wrong with music that stimulates brain activity? Thumbs up, says the brain to the entire experience — and the heart, having been properly bribed with the effervescence of 'The Happy Song', is too confused to object.