Review:'Hendrickson,Bruce & The Blue Giant Zeta Puppies' 'A New Jerusalem'
- Label: 'We Don't Need No Stinking Badges'
- Genre: 'Indie'
- Release Date: '1.7.24.'- Catalogue No: 'GOLDHAT05'
Our Rating:
Four years after Bruce Hendrickson & The Blue Giant Zeta Puppies released A New Jerusalem digitally, it is finally available as a cd, so you can hear what this International conglomerate think constitutes a New Jerusalem, one clue it isn't St Pancras. Alongside Bruce Hendrickson The Blue Giant Zeta Puppies are Tom Woodger, Martin Halstead, John McGreivey and Mark McGee who also contributes the artwork.
The album opens with Prologue/Yellow Skies (Part I) That is narrated by special guest Mark McGee, he sets the scene for what's to come, all the top secret business that is delved into, behind the billboards that advertise the album, the atmospheric synths and drums slowly build towards a seat at a hotel bar with a Vodka, you try to drown out the sound of the sirens.
After The Apocalypse has distressed synth washes swirling round Bruce Hendrickson's observations on the scene he is trying to negotiate, the wastelands stretch out before him, guitars building.
Any Sunny Day that stays sunny and doesn't end in wind rain and despair setting in, is welcome these days, this has the sound of some very close almost claustrophobic guitars, bass gently strumming the hope for a nice day into us, this builds and builds like the sun is finally poking through the clouds.
Yellow Skies (Part II) has a dark industrial beat, that keeps insistently making clear how disturbed everything is, synths slowly show shades of light, while you wait for Lagartija Nick to steal your soul.
Pale Horse slowly stumbles into town like a scene from a Spaghetti western with the dead man riding the horse, slowly the beat marks time, we wonder how he ended up on that horse, how he didn't fall off, distressed guitars and synths build a chasm around the revolving lyric line.
A New Jerusalem doesn't take us to the Black Cat Cigarette factory that Sun Ra and Joseph of Arimathea thought might be the location, acoustic guitars emerge from the atmospherics, they look round at this strange new world, wondering how you navigate through it, hoping they can survive the fall out, surviving in a post nuclear world, a bereft landscape with nary a William Blake poem to be found left in one piece.
Any Sunny Day (Single Version) cuts three minutes from the original version, adds birdsong a more upfront acoustic guitar, while they are still hoping for that glimpse of sunshine and peace.
The album closes with Roll End Credits (A Chess Game By The Sea) slowly the credits roll as the game gets going, gambits are risked, gently floating by a bishop is sacrificed, can this game be won, at what cost larger than the deeply atmospheric sounds enveloping the players.
Find out more at https://brucehendricksonthebluegiantzetapuppies.bandcamp.com/album/a-new-jerusalem https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063580241994 Contact the band for a list of record shops stocking the cd.
