EARLY MAMMAL - TAKE A LOVER (Riot Season LP, D/L, CDR)

Recorded live in the studio in a couple of days in a stream of single takes, Take A Lover, the third album from London Psych/Stoner Rock trio Early Mammal, shows the band growing into a new reinvigorated sound following a line-up change. Although the synths have been dropped, like on their previous albums, the influence of Captain Beefheart, White Hills, Hawkwind and Uncle Acid and The Deadbeats can still be heard, however the narcotic muscularity of the debut album, Horror at Pleasure, and the more experimental Psych Rock of My Fire has been refined with Take A Lover showing a much greater depth as Early Mammal continue to develop and expand their sound as an early 70s heavy Psych/Blues/Rock inspired band.

The first side of Take A Lover opens with the heavy riffing grind of ‘The Great German’ which is followed in the same vain by the fuzzed out, early Sabbath sounding ‘Inside’……….within the first two tracks Early Mammal have shown exactly where they are coming from with a brew of stoned sonic sludge where bluesy psychedelia crashes into woozy, tripped out heavy rock. There is also a great deal of subtlety on this record………. ‘Morning’ is an excellent desert Blues track that unhurriedly merges into the very psychedelic ‘Sigh On’, these two tunes are both on heavy rotation down in our psychedelic basement and they are hopefully an indication of the future direction the band are taking. Flip the platter and the fuzzed up, hazy ‘Glad Is Night’ kicks off side two, a Quaaludes and whisky fuelled crawl through a stoned soundscape of the Southern swamps………….by now the drugs have really kicked in and the rest of the side is taken up with a snippet of a bottleneck slide blues jam and a found dialogue sample before the album closes with The Good / GG Return & Out’.  ‘The Good / GG Return & Out’ is a throbbing beast of a Psych Rock track driven by a Møtrik pulse combined with a tangle of lead playing that pushes the tune to a glorious burn out before collapsing in on itself and reprising the riff from ‘The Great German’. Devotees of early 70s “head music” and the more current stoner bands are really going to dig this record with the stand out tracks being ‘Morning’ (check the video out here…… https://youtu.be/MtXqaY7W5Qo) and ‘Sigh On’ being worth the price of admission alone.

Out now, Take A Lover is another quality release from Riot Season Records and is available on gold vinyl or as a digital download (plus there are also a few promo CDRs still available to buy) from either the Riot Season webshop at http://riotseason.bigcartel.com/ or Bandcamp site https://riotseasonrecords.bandcamp.com/album/take-a-lover. Check it out you headz out there.

THEE PSYCHEDELICATESSEN