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Review: 'Plastic Pals, The'
'Psychic Reader'   

-  Label: 'Polythene records/Paraply Records'
-  Genre: 'Rock' -  Release Date: '2.11.18.'-  Catalogue No: 'Polythene 009/Paraply 026'

Our Rating:
The Plastic Pals from Stockholm are back with another very cool album of classic intelligent guitar rock made for listeners with open ears and a love of classic guitar work. This time round they have just continued along the same path the previous albums have inhabited and then upped the ante with great collaborations with Jonathan Segal, Chris Cacavas and JD Foster among others.

The album also has some very cool photography from Bassist Bengt Alm and artwork from Drummer Olov Oqvist to make it well worth owning on Vinyl or cd.

From the opening title track Psychic reader that along with the cool lyrics features the first guitar freak out that helps accentuate the tale of going to a Psychic Reader in New York and what she tells them and will it help them to the other side or not, well I hope it takes a good long while before they find out.

Love Away All the things You Hate starts off like an old Ian Dury song and the tale told in the lyrics could be one of Ian's but without all the vernacular and slang as they try to not go totally insane with the pain of a relationship and a life falling apart.

Connecting is sort of lazy hazy laid back almost funky dance song to a new lover your connecting too and it's no surprise that it's dedicated to Lead singer Hawk's good friend Sofia Wallenstein, she should be very happy to have this sung to her repeatedly now that Hawk has come clean.

Shame The Devil has some almost weeping and wailing guitars and cool Keyboards from special guest pal Chris Cacavas helping the devil get shamed into telling the truth before Hawk and Anders guitars get to taking this off into very Television like territory of histrionic guitars and then a slow descent to close a very classic sounding song.

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof in some ways reminds me of early Blue Oyster Cult in a good way and the swaggering sound doesn't have any gravel in it like the lyrics do but has some, really intense guitar work that is all carefully placed in the mix by JD Foster so everything has a place to build the intensity and the heat of that hot tin roof.

Weight Of The World is slower and more ruminative with Johnathan Segal's strings on a song you'll need to wallow in the majesty of a few times to really get everything going in within it.

Ah good old Clerkenwell the bands paean to the little country folk rock scene in Clerkenwell and a song about lots of people I know and great venues like The Betsey Trotwood and Appletree pubs it's a great tribute to a fertile part of London's music scene that welcomes musicians from all over the world and it's always nice to hear songs about events I was at so to speak yes things are getting very Meta as I read the list of album pledgers many of whom I know.

Yes as they then sing Timing Is Everything as if The Plastic Pals were from an earlier time they might be selling loads of records and touring the world with rock music like this as they beg and plead for some more and again the guitars do all sorts of tricks across my speakers.

Riding With Elvis is a remix of one of the bands singles and has more guitars and yet more guitars in JD Fosters mix of it and great stream of conscious style lyrics full of namedrops of whose along for that ride that goes an good 80 mph towards the ending crescendo.

The album closes with Invisible an almost mournful slow kiss off to someone he is invisible too full of delicious guitar wrapped in the Olov Oqvists soft percussion it's a nice soft ending for another really cool album from The Plastic Pals.

Find out more at https://www.facebook.com/theplasticpals/ http://www.theplasticpals.se/ https://www.amazon.com/Psychic-Reader-Plastic-Pals/dp/B07JRGD5SS?fbclid=IwAR2OEVbAqXVL2Sj3VVyWShAuaKaj7rUQO2dfb4ppHF_wESjq7UTGjOYzkkc https://itunes.apple.com/se/album/psychic-reader/1437881094?fbclid=IwAR1cRvPKF6_Y8NIdj0QPO14m__hrYZYh7toY3G7rFgRjvPWglBhGKMyFYCE

  author: simonovitch

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