Coming from the psychedelic garage background that he does (performing in trio Taos Humm), Edward Penfold‘s debut solo album was never going to be the most ordinary of affairs, was it? I think it’s fair to say that you won’t be overhearing thirteen year old girls singing along to any of these songs on their iPods in the nearest Tesco Express.
On the title track, it feels like Penfold has kidnapped Ray Davies and forced him to share an uber-bong with a young Graham Coxon before setting pen to paper, while numbers like ‘P.P.S.‘ (recalling peak period Air) and the lazy summer timbre of ‘Song For Joan‘ continue to conjure up images of flatmates sprawled out on sofas in a haze of marijuana smoke. Throughout Caulkhead – named for the inhabitants of the Isle Of Wight, apparently – there’s an unshakeable feeling that you’ve heard these tunes somewhere before, yet it is practically impossible to figure out where. ‘Up Down‘ is a major antagonist in this respect, though a certain part of my brain thinks it is borrowing part of the tune from The Bee Gees‘ seminal dancefloor party anthem ‘Jive Talkin‘. Bizarrely though, Penfold makes it (and ‘If You Like‘) sound like Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd, yet somehow also thoroughly modern.
It’s a startlingly varied box of curiosities, the bleary eyed awakenings of ‘Lawrence Of Arabica‘ hardly setting the scene for what is to come. It’s undeniably pretty sometimes, but equally confusing at others. You’ve just got used to Penfold stacking an impressive array of biscuits on the shelves in front of you, and then suddenly, he’ll hit you with a tin of tuna instead. This album’s tin of tuna is ‘Tired‘, which, musically at least, sounds like something that the late Mark Linkous may have written for Sparklehorse, or perhaps even by Leicester’s very own freak merchants Misterlee. The diversity on display makes Caulkhead quite a tricky album to talk at length about anyway, but it’s mostly a laid back experience that I would imagine is greatly enhanced by the inhalation of certain hallucinogenic substances. Not that I would ever suggest doing such a thing, of course. Speaking from a completely clean and sober viewpoint, Penfold’s first foray into solo projects provides enough otherworldly intrigue to keep the listener interested.
It’s like the sixties all over again, but with better trimmed beards and fewer embarrassing delusions of grandeur.
