Gulp

Inspired by a postcard’s missive - ‘All Good Wishes’- Celtic three-piece Gulp go ‘Caledonia Dreaming’ on this summery sophomore follow up to 2014’s ‘Season Sun’. Comprised of Super Furry Animal Guto Pryce, Lindsey Leven and guitarist Gid Goundrey, they proffer eleven slices of sun-drenched solar power-pop articulating the pleasures of settlement and evoking the memories of the passed-past. Head medicine and sonic tonics.

‘Search for your love’ evokes 70s progressive-folkers Renaissance (initially featuring ex-Yardbirds Relf and McCarty), a blissfully bucolic ode to love’s codes of practice. Seek and ye shall find, endings begat beginnings.

The kosmische mädchen ‘Claudia’ emerges straight from the Stereolab-oratory, jerky jinking motorik mania augmented by ivory tinkling nerve tingling-a-ling.

‘Spend time right here with you’ exhibits the melancholic spine of East River Pipe’s ‘Ah Dictaphone’, a lamenting affair of the heart's beating art. ‘Beam’ metaphorises the super-structural entity of the ‘woman’ the bedrock of man’s existence, the foundation to all things created: the giver without taking. It also suggests the light that shines its rays of radiance.

A gust of Hawkwind permeates the space-rock ‘Morning Velvet Sky’ rife with pulsating prosaic prose that warns of ‘heat that’s blazing down and ‘coloured beats’, kaleidoscopic topics for the ages. New dawn raids.

Synister synths throb-a-job on ‘Following Rain’, Wicker Man- esque portentous string-picking and ominous questions of uncertainty (‘Wonder where we’re going to …’), an elemental calm after the storm signalling further downpour/outpour.

The standout ‘Ride is the only concession to Price’s alma mater, with echoes of SFA’s ‘Golden Retriever’, a lolloping journey of transcendence, whispered and hushed mantras for better states of mind.

Ebbing and flowing closer ‘Silver Tides, is a bite of original moog-droogs Silver Apples’s ‘Oscillations’, hypnotic rumblings designed to extract the eternal essence of common sense.

Overall, Gulp deliver an(other) aural travelogue that addresses upheaval and movement, a vision of transition, a superior salve valve.