Time On Earth is the latest solo album by legendary musician Pete Astor who was originally in both The Loft and The Weather Prophets, this time around he has a cadre of legendary musicians behind him that includes Ian Button, Neil Scott, Andy Lewis and Sean Read.
The album opens with New Religion that has a split personality, as it name-checks all sorts of modern gods including Marc Bolan, as it goes from being a soft indie tune, to a sort of odd rap tune, but somehow works as the bassline becomes more central to the song.
English Weather is a sad slow song about loss and alienation from your family in times of strife, the gentle piano accents the lyrics as Pete's vocals make sure you can hear everything you need, to understand why you need such wonderfully doleful brass to come in, before he sees his mum with a gun in a disco.
Stay Lonely is dark and downbeat full of reflections on if you should go home alone, or try to find another meaningless connection, the brass section is wonderfully redolent and tenderly morose.
Time On Earth is an elegy of sorts for a lost legend, with a cool keyboard part and Ian Buttons often rather inventive drumming and percussion as the search goes on for someone who disappeared in a puff of smoke.
Miracle On The High Street what could it be, no empty shops, Free clothes, new record shops, well not quite, but the gentle guitar does all sorts of stuff as we look at the stopped clock and wonder just how such a miracle could happen here.
Sixth Form Rock Boys takes Pete right back to forming his first band at school and the dreams they had for global superstardom, with memories of having Pentagrams on his bedroom wall, which is an image of Pete I would never have imagined, perhaps he was a Diamond Head obsessive after all, or this is just about those guys who would possibly have wanted a fight over who liked the hardest bands. This has some cool late 60's style backing vocals on a very non-metal tune.
Soft Switch is another evocation of teenage dreams and hopes, that he may have taken from some of his students as the guitars have nods towards Nick Drake and John Martyn.
Grey Garden has them sitting looking at the weather, trying to get prophetic, when they spy that red sky, as they shelter from the storm, while trying to get cosy together, this is sweet and rather languorous.
Undertaker is slow and portentous as Pete says farewell to a loved one in style, to make them sound like they had just stepped out of a Simon and Garfunkel classic, into and now out of his life. Although the description of the cremation is rather chilling.
The album closes with Pete's tribute song to Pat Fish, Fine And Dandy that sums up there long friendship with references to Pat's Live From Fishy Mansions sessions, that he was playing in the months leading up to his death, this has some stonking guitar parts and is a song I first heard Pete play live at the Pat Fish tribute show last year. I know there is a lot of fan demand for this to released as a 7" and 12" single alongside Rolo McGinty's tribute song to Pat and I totally agree with that hope.
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