Album Review: The Sensible Gray Cells - "Get Back Into The World"

 

As the name suggests, the Sensible Gray Cells are a collaboration between the Damned duo of Captain Sensible and Paul Gray. The group first came to our attention with 2013's rather good A Postcard From Britain album, a searing but humorous look at the state of the nation. With Gray having rejoined the Damned since then, it looked as though SGC would be taking a bit of a back seat but with the group currently taking a quick breather, the pair have got together to record a follow-up.

Essentially this is the sound of the more psychedelic end of the Damned's catalogue. While the straightforward opener Sell Her Spark (an ode to Cap's beloved Crystal Palace) is fairly standard fare, the title track sounds like a more psychedelic version of Madness and desperately urges the people of the world to get off their phones and look at what's going on around them. The cautionary tale of middle age Don't Say I Didn't Warn Ya meanwhile sounds like a halfway bridge between the classic Nuggets garage rock of the '60s and the Inspiral Carpets/Charlatans end of the Madchester scene.

Captain Sensible has always been a man unafraid of getting stuck into deserving political targets and there's a few songs on here that show his social conscience isn't getting any less barbed with age - Black Spider Memo Man takes a well-aimed potshot at hateful tabloid journalists pulling the wool over the nation's eyes, A Little Prick takes aim at quack therapy in all its forms from medicine to unnecessary software updates and What's The Point of Andrew? is as the title suggests an anti-royalty diatribe. There's room for a bit of humour in there as well though as DJ With Half A Brain takes a gleeful snipe at late night radio phone-ins.

Musically, Get Back Into The World is an impressively varied beast as well from the angular Who style rock of lead-off single So Long to the twin psychedelic epics of Jam Tomorrow and Another World. All in all, it's a good enjoyable listen with plenty of musical versatility, some good thoughtful lyrics and enough little tricks that you'll still be noticing little new things with every listen. A good album to lose yourself inside in other words and one of the strongest efforts of the year so far, this comes highly recommended.

NITE SONGS RATING: 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑 (9/10)

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