“Mister Picture Perfect/ I’ve got news for you/You’re no better than me man /I never look down on you” (I sang along to that bit, addressing the whole thing , complete with pointing finger, to the ceiling).
The Rainbow E.P. is the debut release from Scottish duo ‘Rainbow Family’. It is beautiful.
It made me dizzy with euphoria and I felt like there was empathy being given to me. This five track descent from pure pop to kitsch is one hell of a helter skelter ride, right from the glowing bossa-novas of ‘I can see a rainbow’ to the instrumental and abstract retrospective of ‘When California Began’.
“Open the window/ Breathe in the air/say that you love me/ say that you care”.
Jamie and the Magic Torch, or what?
This is effortless simplicity that in all its psychedelic infancy cites the late Sixties and early Seventies as a golden era, and does itself much justice in replicating the beautiful and cultish sounds of those years in a way which winds itself so easily into your heart. That opening track, ‘I can see a Rainbow’ slides over you like an epiphany, utopia, or some long forgotten beautiful dream, steering you in and out of its bontempi dreamscape visions and soothing piano-led middle eights as they orchestrate, making it feel like you are staring at the sky from the bottom of a spinning rowboat .
We are nudged awake with a sampled reminder that this is 2006 until the timeless lyrical celebration of the mundane as it sits in your head. “This is not a circular for you” is the refrain, though the loops and samples build slowly like a gently revolving door. There is a minor chord descent that pulls you in by the heart and in, and even the acoustic guitar is sampled as this reaches a kind of crescendo. It sucks you in so easily into a misty-eyed confusion:
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“Is yer head in the sand/’cos my life’s in your hands”.
The piano marks time as the harmonies lament what has gone forever, yet somehow it celebrates the present. This is all in such perfect sway with my soulboy sensibilities that my dancing feet don’t even bother to complain as the semi-ambient hurdy-gurdy goes all Clockwork Orange on me, feeding my head and my head only. By the end, there are interplanetary check-in procedures needed to rejoin the real world, which you will feel slightly reluctant to do. The whole record has an urgency about it that will pull you from wherever your tastes in music lie towards it. Magnetic, if you like, I dare you to resist this groove as it urges your feet and your biochemistry to embrace it. If you are not the dancing type, then do not fear. Lyrically this is as picture perfect as anything, ever.
By the time this perfectly structured release reaches its instrumental state, you are already eased via the overlapping harmonic transition into a semi trancelike state of mind. I must also mention the cascading sample “Electronicmusic” bit at the end of ‘Seagus’, the penultimate track.
This will be playing on my stereo forever. It is quite simply mind blowing. The scary thing is, it sounds like Rainbow Family haven’t moved out of first gear! Buy it! Hear it! See them!
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