Tin Spirits

Just because Dave Gregory was a founder member of XTC it doesn’t mean that they must sound quirky and eccentric – one of the best things about that band was their musicianship and Gregory has brought that into Tin Spirits. Daniel Steinhardt is a founder of company The GigRig while Mark Kilminster was with Stamford Amp (BBC house band) and drummer Doug Hussard was with Mike D’Abo for years and has been gigging around Swindon for years.

So, not exactly a supergroup, more a bunch of seasoned and very able musicians who have found their home playing together in a Prog band.

Since there is no keyboards player and two guitarists in Gregory and Steinhardt one might expect to be blown away by riffery and axe-wars but in fact this is an album of fine vocals and harmonies as well as dome superb guitar playing. The songs are complex and multi-layered but this doesn’t sound like complexity for the sake of it. When the bombast and explosions of ‘Old Hands’ dies away to leave acoustic guitar picking the opening sequence again it feels like the closing of a book rather than a departure.

The powerful stuff is there, for sure, with tracks like ‘Binary Man’ which is full of dark playing and reaching melodies but they are as adept on the current single ‘Summer Now’ which is pretty and meandering, perfect for the Indian summer of pre-autumn days like these.
Closing track (suite?) 'Garden State' has all of the things that the band are about - 15 sublime minutes of music.

This isn’t a new form of Prog or a creation of music you’ve never experienced before rather, it is a restatement of what music of worth can be like – involving, enticing and capable of drawing the listener into the music and teaching something.

One of the best albums I’ve heard this year if only because it is so damnably good to listen to and so nice to return to time and again.