Comprising Glenn Smyth and Sebastian Maynard Francis, Tom Ford having moved out of the area, psych/pop duo SOLAR EYES make their eponymous Fierce Panda album debut in persuasive manner opening with synthesized wailing sirens before distorted vocals, spaghetti Western guitar riff and driving drums breach the walls, riding a stroboscopic rhythm for Alcatraz, a number inspired by both feeling trapped in a stormy relationship, his other half holding the keys to the cell, and Smyth having watched the old Clint Eastwood film Escape from Alcatraz.
The track fades away but, early Primal Scream giving way to Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, the intensity continues with Roll The Dice, a number about having a go and believing in yourself, and damn what others think. Written in Texas and infused with desert atmospherics, the urgent, echoing vocals Let’s Run Way again conjures a Spaghetti western vibe with a darkness that feels like Amigo The Devil on amphetamines, described by Smyth as Fast Car with a Brummie slant, inspired by small-town tales of daylight robberies in times of old and tales of the last crimes of Bonnie and Clyde.
The title of Deep Trip gives a fair idea of where it’s at musically, a slow narcotic swirl with a Pink Floyd feel and inspired by a scene in the second series of True Detective that dissolves into a psych guitar finale. On then to the cosmic warbling intro to Bulldozer before it explodes into another strobe rhythm with distorted vocals and driving drums, the song designed to capture the turbulent feelings and excitement of newfound love.
They reach the mid-point with Dreaming of The Moon, a sort of ELO meets spaghetti Western ballad set on the moon with its reverb guitars and tumbling drums, Smyth in semi-falsetto vocal mode. A definite album standout. As is, channelling The Ronettes via The Jesus and Mary Chain, On Top of the World, a revisiting of an old song he recorded back in 2014 with producer/engineer David McCabe and which, featuring female vocals, was used on various TV shows
And from old to brand new with She Kissed The Gun which keeps the Spector link taking the title from what he allegedly told police on his arrest, the slow prowling track, however, being decidedly more heady, Bowie-informed, dark space rock. (At Least) Paranoia Loves You, written about someone Smyth had to put up with for years, has a punkier urgency, again with galloping drums anchoring the keyboards haze, the album going back to their very first single with Acid Test (The Walls Are Closing In On Me), dip into retro psychedelia, and indie that nods to The Chemical Brothers and Brian Jonestown Massacre.
Initially intended a song of love and optimism before Smyth had a strop and turned it on its head, the penultimate It’s Gone Forever emerges from a wall of distorted noise and snarling synths for the drums and disembodied, distorted vocals to put their head down with a relentlessness that embodies the fury within. It ends, Floyd undertones again detected, with the swaggering riffery of Take Me To The Man in the wake of watching a documentary on the Jim Jonestown Massacre and Guy Ritchie’s Snatch and looking to evoke the raw, spikey delirium of The Stooges I Wanna Be Your Dog.
The whole B-Town revival sparked by the likes of Swim Deep, Jaws and Peace has rather faded away over the past couple of years, but with this album Solar Eyes could well prove the phoenix from the ashes.
A taster for their next album, BLUEBYRD pay tribute to their roots with the walking rhythm strumalong and harmonica self-released Black Country Towns (“Like Black Country towns/That born and raised you/And where you lay down/You knew where you come from/And where you belonged”) which also gives a nod to the heritage of the area (“A plaque in a burger bar/Lest we forget”) and the sense of it and local identity being being lost to progress (“They've buried our heroes/Under cable tv/Hidden our stories
So we can't see/Where we come from/Where we’re going to” and how “in the big picture You mean nothing at all”.
MARC LEMON keeps them coming, except his latest, Oxford, (www.youtube.com/watch?v=26tLnaRx7t8), is a drums, organ and handclaps heavy instrumental, still with distorted fuzz garage and psychedelic 60s roots but inspired by listening to Sandy Nelson and bashed out on a beaten up 1962 drum kit he got off eBay, the keyboards filtering Booker T and the MGs with Shadows Of Knight.
