WOW!

" Having now heard their album and rarities [some of 2008's ‘So Tremendously Like a Dream" and the solo E.P. " In The Garden"] from 2003 comes a bit closer to Literary Post-punk & space rock rather than Goth, but after finding a copy of the first EP secondhand store bin a few months later I fell in love with the band all the same. The combination of Stooges-meets-Nick Cave primal, tortured acidic rock with uncommercial production This people’s band street cred and big baritone Basso roar was an instant attraction. I imagine he does quite well with the ladies

I assume those reading this will have some awareness of who Edgar's Omaha Band were with Steve Micek or the proto-crusty DeathStar Radio project from Uniontown, PA or the Pittsburgh and Baltimore shows environments they blossomed in, I'll mention that I was amazed to discover that the singer is actually an American...so I’ll skip any attempt at biography – that’s already done elsewhere, including in the informative CD reissue liner notes – and get straight on with a look at the music.

‘DeathStar radio and Julian Edgar [same Front-man] The songwriter of dizzying lyrical prowess , The self-sacrificing Citizen’ begins the album with a 2 tentative poems from Scottish Poet Laureate: Sir Walter Scott on Mary Hamilton and The Soldier and His Lady then before kicking into a full band slaughter, listeners are treated to a post modern poem reducing a blues stomp to its most basic elements, and grinding it into the underworld with tortured, snarling guitar, thudding sub-Jarvis Cocker basso roar on" is a post-modern lyrical master-piece so by this point I am a true believer. [James]Julian Edgar's Power and Control are awesome dissonant guitar manipulations on "Let's Go Out !" The full band spares no one in the most gothic track on the album , obviously an homage to The Wind-kissed Pictures era - Christian Death and loose drum splatter, cool as ice syncopated back-beat from Jeremy Barnhardt and Caitlin Zielinsky [bass guitar] and Jeremy's wife Faith Charlotte on some backing Vocals with Edgar as the preacher of doom.proclaims convincingly "and Dear, the colour of your eyes always coincides with the colour of the sky" on "en Chamelia" a clash-Cure type sweet English pop song. Then I see why so many comparisons with Early Leonard Cohen on the Title track, "So Tremendously like a dream" is so darkly beautiful it could be a stand-alone poem without the music I fell in love with an ‘American girl Similar in Britishness to "The Soldier and His Lady’ is a vicious immigration song about his regretted departure from Germany written on the boat leaving off the Belgian coast to White Cliffs of Dover song, starting with the recruitment of a hopeless, aimless young man with the enticement to kill, in the line about he'd had his bottle taken away from him but not the gun beneath the seat the immigration agent asks the usual" Is it business or pleasure to which Edgar retorts "It's business and it's pleasure cuz I've come here to make love to...." in a Cave-ish Mississippi mud type American accent Then a song nearly becoming a sick hysterical doo-wop ballad about a prostitute he had as a friend in Portland, OR who died under mysterious circumstances and whos' body was found on the edge of a river in "a Song for Bella" that sings of the grievously wounded aftermath gallows humour trickery, One of his catchiest songs. Next number takes us back to tortured guitar grind, embodying the Jim Morrisson type wailing that and his trade-mark black-skied grief that flows through the whole record, essentially the one repeated riff was all he needed to get his point across as descending chords crash against the listeners expectations and definition of what a song is pulling us further into the pit while Edgar’s voice tears your soul apart and breaks your heart with this hard rocking ship of woe. ‘’The Red Upon His Lips" continues the gloom with a spacier, floating progressive psychedelic blues vibe and heavily phased ringing out that stratocasters are famous for; if it weren’t for Edgar’s distinctive Stooges/Nick Cave-ish wail, The song could almost be an early Early Black Sabbath out-take.

Thankfully, Literary Goth Rock’ picks up the pace again and invites some spirits to whirl around the ceiling, with a driving basic riff sounding almost like a Johnny Cash tune take on riff piledrivers like ‘TV Eye’ haunted by the spirit of Iggys on an STP overdose. ‘’ continues to bring the mantric angst, whilst ‘Love in the Rain’ does the same, but with some glimmer of hope and inner strength now ripping through the existential mania with triumphantly damaged riffing and splinters of feedback, finishing with Edgar exclaiming “that was soo good!” and panting with exhaustion. The shimmering 8 minute"a Song in Sunday's Sand The center-piece is the center-piece of the album and another masterful vocal track that is so delicate it nearly made me cry By this point I see why they nearly changed their name to Deathstar Radio seeing all the different vocal and music styles coming through it is almost as if I had been listening to a radio station which barely sticks to a format.

Sister downer is another shimmering Velvet Underground stylized ballad in 3/4 waltz timing. that must be difficult to play live.

‘Sadness" closes the album and is by far the most Stones'y ballade, The Sticky Fingers era good kind but he doesn't quite get the Mick Jaggar blues man vibe right and on this track Edgar is slightly less confident of his voice so likely why the track is the last one on the record the kind of extended oddity that less kind and more conventional reviewers would deem a ‘failed experiment’. Going through numerous distinct sections, I still struggle to work out how it all relates even after all these years of listening to it. The first section is a snippet of pub conversation, two guys observing another guy trying to pick up a woman, and wondering to themselves where they’ll be in the morning. This soon kicks into a typical repeated Manchester melancholy riff on "Sad Exchange" The next one is an homage to Neil Diamond and Lee Hazelwood. I know this because I've seen him cover Some Velvet Morning and "cracklin' Rosie in an English accent with Edgar’s weird-ass singing about a girl who carries a gun around then he whistles at her for some strange reason Maybe he's a masochist lamenting a lack of answers I'll just give up trying to understand and just accept it as fantasy prose, ‘the riff’ As is typical for the whole album is the canvas upon which the songs are infused with a deep feeling of dread, emotional pain, confusion, alcoholism while searching and clutching at some salvation especially on his rendering of Psalm 23 Coupled with Edgar’s emotional lyrics and their lethal delivery, you’re almost left wanting to blow your brains out without exactly knowing why, but I guess the strength of this album is that such a feeling ends up as redemptive rather than suicidal, because it deals with real gut emotion but strives towards a life worth living.

" Oh Isabelle, I Can't Explain is more Manchester Melancholy with a big surprise moment halt the way through and could be a hit radio song if the production weren't so tinny an Lo-Fi go figure a song that could have made the man wealthy and they don't even mix it properly

(The real closer is a short vocal acoustic track, with his girlfriend at the time playing bass which if explained or described here would basically give it away, so I’ll leave that for you to discover.)