Sweet Ok Supersister

I don’t know if this is wonderfully bizarre or bizarrely wonderful and I really don’t care – I just want to be listening to stuff like this for the sheer pleasure of the music and the experience and I really don’t give two hoots for genre or origins or fashion.

Supersister were a Dutch group with Sacha van Geest and Robert Jan Stips at their heart and this album was the last thing they recorded under that banner and what a way to go out. They have taken everything that they put into three albums of fine prog and added innocence to the mix with wonderful results.

This sounds positively insane with little munchkin voices intruding all over the place alongside lyrics about 'Dangling Dingdongs’ or 'Gi Ga Go’ and music that has childish charms and strange ecstatic rhythms but the music in between the strangeness is actually superb – these guys really could play.
There are echoes of the best of British (Canterbury Scene) prog and a fairly hefty psychedelic influence but anyone who remembers early Bowie or Genesis or Caravan will see where Supersister are coming from.

It is almost impossible to pick out individual tracks, rather the album should be dealt with as a whole and from the very beginning you are in a place of wonders with the unexpected lurking around every corner and assaulted on all sides by happy whimsy and charm. They combine musical styles and forms with some very odd additions such as bagpipes and glockenspiel as well as Balalaika and double bass to a satisfying blancmange of sounds.

Much like a spiral staircase though, once you are on the stairs the only place to go is to the end and the journey is what this is all about. Leave your adult self at the door and enjoy the changes that Supersister wring to your soul and you will leave the album a better person – at least a little more