album review: belles will ring, crystal theatre

I defy you to dislike this album. I am serious. You may love it, you may be indifferent, but you certainly won’t dislike it.

I fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. On the one hand, Crystal Theatre contains some finely crafted, often lovely, pieces of music. On the other, though I have now listened to the album a fair few times, probably more, and I could not sing a single line, or even hum a solitary snippet, from any of the songs. That is hardly a ringing endorsement, but unfortunately it must be said, Belles Will Ring fall a little short of living up to their name here.

We open with the title track, a little instrumental number that nicely captures the mood of the album. It leads into ‘Come To The Village’ that, with its standout bass line and use of clapping sound effects, is one of the record’s highlights. It would have been better if it had ended about a minute earlier though – beyond this point the significantly slackening rhythm change leaves the song limp.

From there on, the album ebbs and flows, some songs better (‘Do You Know What I See’, ‘The River’, ‘I Hear Your Voice On The Wind’) some songs less so (‘Trouble In Deepwater’, ‘The Green’). None of the songs immediately stand out as a “single”, which is a shame. But, on the other hand, this means that none stood out for the wrong reasons either, which is no small achievement.

If taken on its own, Crystal Theatre presents Belles Will Ring as a more softly spoken, more earnest, Brian Jonestown Massacre. ‘Come North With Me Baby, Wow’ is one of the more evident examples of this. ‘Street Lamp Stomp’ also had me thinking of The Zombies. These bands should not be invoked lightly, so I will hasten to point out that while Belles Will Ring clearly stand with the other two in the genre of psychedelic pop, they are not within touching distance of either. They still have a fair way to go before that.

In the meantime, their music can be enjoyed, just in a very passive way. It will become such a part of your surroundings that you won’t really notice that it’s there – like some faded wallpaper that hasn’t quite gone out of date. My advice? Stick Crystal Theatre in your car’s CD player, and it will stay there, unobtrusively, for quite some time.