- Label: 'Think Like A Key Music'
- Genre: 'Sixties'
- Release Date: '11.4.25.'- Catalogue No: 'TLAK1197'
Our Rating:
Anti-Inflammatory is Dr Strangely Strange's first album for 28 years, most of the band are now on the wrong side of 80 and were obviously in search of more fun than they could find at the Darby & Joan club. They originally formed back in 1968, the current line-up is Ivan Pawle, Joe Thoma, Tim Goulding, Tim Booth and the album was produced in Clonakilty by Brian Casey.
The album opens with Up With The Lark that is a sparse piano folk song for the joys of seeing the larks in the morning and how good it makes them feel.
Baby Bunting is upbeat in the ways it ought to be, if you're putting the Baby bunting out again, for the arrival of your latest grand or is it great grandkid, with the fiddles and spry percussion accompanying the almost nursery rhyme lyrics for the joy of the latest arrival.
Like Water Like Wind has a relaxed plaintive feel for a proper country folk song trying to get to the roots of how dreamlike their lives have been.
Sulan is a rather prettily bucolic string laden Irish folk song, that I think has some cool bodhran keeping the time.
Rosenallis Two-Step feels a bit like Little Feat for this country folk hoe down, they hope to win her over, on the dance floor once more. Then this takes a dark turn with the hero overdosing on drugs indeterminate.
Drive 'Em Down has a wistful edge to this jaunty folk song, they are in thrall to the bonnie lasses they have seen a wandering, the brief relationships they had.
Murmuration is a far more fitting song on this subject than the last one I reviewed earlier this year, this takes us on a journey with them into the heart of winter, the fiddles slowly soothing any pains away, in time for the penny whistle to ululate like the Murmuration above them.
Morning Song has a rather elegiac feel to the piano and fiddle, as if they have a tear in their eyes for something missing between them on this gently beautiful instrumental.
Back In The Day is thoughts on how their younger selves would have reacted to hearing they would be putting out new music in 2025, how the years of fun and games have turned into this, it has the coolest guitar solo to accompany the long journey they have been on.
The album closes with Vienna a piano led evocation of the darkness that is Vienna, in places you could in fact waltz along to this.
Find out more at https://www.thinklikeakey.com/format/1637114-anti-inflammatory https://www.facebook.com/DrStrangelyStrange https://drstrangelystrange.bandcamp.com/album/anti-inflammatory
