SING TO GOD

I have been a member quite a few years of PA (albeit not the most active one) and I have never reviewed my favourite album of all time. But how do you review an album that is perfect in every sense, a masterpiece through and through? I will not. I will just try to explain what this album does to me.

I remember I lost sight of the Cardiacs after the release of Heaven born and ever bright. A few years later I saw in my favourite record shop in Rotterdam some manic faces grinning at me on a record cover. Cardiacs ~ Sing to God. Hey, that is that band I used to like so much! Of course I bought the CD and put it on the moment I arrived back home.

I simply could not believe what I was hearing. It was all that you could expect from Cardiacs but at the same time nothing you could possibly have expected. All the known Cardiacs elements were there but multiplied a few hundred times to the extreme. Almost every tune is a perfect example of beatleseque tunefulness combined with manic inventiveness.

20 years later my feelings about the album are even stronger. I can not stop myself from singing and clapping along with "dog like sparky" (much to the complete despair of my wife). The punk tornado that is 'Fiery gun hand' leaves me completely exhausted and gasping for breath again and again. The intense onslaught of 'Dirty boy' still brings me in a state of higher consciousness were all I can still do is produce some sort of lunatic grin. And if you see a guy in his late forties jumping around like a maniac through his living room that is probably me, when "bellyeye" is blasting through the speakers.

After almost 20 years and a trillion of plays "sing to god" still leaves me completely amazed.

5 stars of course, but I'd rather give a million.