WANDERING IN THE VASTNESS

SKY CRIES MARY, known recently in 2020 with her previous album, had seduced me to breathe a melodic, soaring, psychedelic and stoner prog rock; a sound reminding me of the trances of the crazy and still young PATTI SMITH. A 13th album after a debut in 1986, an interlude at the end of 2007 and a revival since the new decade. Their music is a true synthesis of sounds, feelings, thoughts leading to meditation in this pandemic period; isolated but determined to give the best of themselves, they were assisted by Jack ENDINO to design this psychedelic, spiritual and metaphysical album, a singular adventure coming out of Rodrick's dreams in part.

"Crystal Gazing" begins with a dark wave rock trance entry, a powerful space rock stamped reserved tune. "L Train" over a cold groovy pop melody, greasy, rough, aggressive 60's pop that's already getting back to basics. "Red Red Fox" with the drums clear and dry, distant metronomic, psychedelic sounds and a vocal on a mantra for trance; an aerial dreamscape from a different world. "Can't Find the Time" raw rock with some youth sap ROLLING STONES!! A psychedelic break on punky, rhythmic, expressive MOTORPSYCHO or MONSTER MAGNET; it starts on a beautiful melody with the alternating voices of Rodrick and Debra. "Chaos at the Port" and a long piece with western slide effect, sound with guitar from The EDGE; when the associated voices combine with the hippie fashion of the 60s and still invite meditation.

"Bright Biggest Eye" for minimalist southern rock and a nice delicate psych rock-stoner rise that continues on "The Dolmen" for the jungle, Indian, oriental mantra sequence with tribal percussion and sitar synth, continuing with "Jodo" and its violins, an omnipresent bass, synths in reverberation. Musical madness, perhaps the best piece with ambient on the old TANGERINE DREAM, amazing. "Brifge Sleepers" on The CLASH, the POGUES, a raw folk rock tonic tinged with punk, confusing after the previous ambient passages. "Raga Metal Machine" oh there the intro that takes your breath away, the 60's with a good dose of LSD and other toxic substances approved at that time, voices chanted backwards in a long crescendo and this sitar synth that goes very far. "A Lonely Deer" for the standard title, the voices sharing the limelight on a slide guitar, talkative and the drums which follow. "Dream Yourself to Sleep" again on a psychedelic mantra; pads, more percussion, a vibrating wood saw, a psychedelic flute, disturbing reverberation; confusingly, the pace picks up for the final mantra crescendo that takes us to Neptune and Saturn.

SKY CRIES MARY offers an hour of spatial digression mixing psychedelic soaring rock with bewitching mantra sounds; well you have to hold on and open your ears if you don't have your chakras, but time plays in favor of this completely hypnotic album where I find myself tapping on the keyboard in tune with the djembe. It's vintage, melancholic on the wanderings of Jim MORRISON, it's vintage without being old, it's trance and rock without drugs but as read elsewhere, it's also good with it.