Having already bathed in the joyous sonic delights of the title track, it is great to have the whole album spinning away in front of me. That first taste was an optimistic and infectious slice of slightly sixties-infused, cosmic rock and the perfect way to kick off an album. But one song does not an album make, so where next?
Through the rockscape that’s where, and Robert Allen, the man behind the moniker, knows his way around that part of the musical map intimately, and infuses his songs with all manner of sounds, styles, eras, and attitudes found there.
“Love Light” has a touch of Buffalo Springfield about it, or at least it mines the same sonic seam of country-tinged rock and roll, an infectious riff, and an incessant groove; this song has more hooks than a Peter Pan convention. “History” is the sound of the best bar-room sonic brawlers you have ever stumbled across, “Some Day” is a hazy and hallucinogenic ballad, and “Shade of White” echoes the birth of rock and roll itself.
It’s not that Mr Mystic plagiarizes or even borrows, it’s just that there is so much rock coursing through his veins, so much roll in his soul, that it seems to ooze out of him in whatever form he chooses.
A rock and roll history lesson wrapped in a tasteful sound, ensconced in classic sonic coating, and striding off into a bright new future for music. There’s a reason these sounds never go out of fashion, they are just so damned incredible…and that goes for our man DownTown too.
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