Blue Orchids - Magical Record Of Blue Orchids

Facts While recording 2018's Righteous Harmony Fist (PICI 015CD/LP), Blue Orchids messed about with a few covers of insanely obscure low-fi garage/psych tunes. Few casual aficionados of rock music will know more than a song or two from this set - the likes of The Penny Saints and The Aardvarks and their kin not exactly being household names. In fact, of the seven '60s acts with songs covered here, none lasted more than a handful of singles. Complementing those songs are covers of songs by two more recent groups. The swirling keyboards of The Growlers' "Pavement And The Boot" is distilled back to it's fundamental garage essence, while Crystal Stilts' two-minute original, "Love Is A Wave", is slowed down and channeled back to the melodic pop wonder lingering beneath it's Reid Brothers buzzsaw and pays respect to the band, who'd themselves covered Blue Orchids' "Low Profile" a few years back. Of special interest will be "Addicted To The Day", the album's key song, the words for which were recently found in a 1977 notebook of Bramah's which at Mark E. Smith had borrowed and then scribbled down the "poem" in thanks, to which Bramah added music. The haunting lines, "How could I have suspected my abysmal future/ A doom which has haunted me/ And turned me into a wreck and a parody", are the centerpiece of the album, a concept compiled of bits and pieces of esoteric tunes, telling a tale of Faustian doom in a pact with forces of evil.