Lately I seem to hear the term Garage Rock attached to just about everything I’m listening too, as it was to this baby, without going into a rant about how many different styles and eras there are of Garage Rock (again). I’m just going to look at this as a release grounded in influences, but ultimately standing up on its own as of today, it’s going to just be classed as seriously cool music.

For the uninitiated (I would expect very few who read RPM to be uninitiated) the Sensible Gray cells consist of Captain Sensible and Paul Gray from you know where alongside Marty Love (Johnny Moped amongst others) on drums with a guest appearance from Monty Oxymoron.

As the LP kicks off I’m not so much drawn into a garage rock vibe but instead led back to thoughts of Phantasmagoria era Damned  ‘Sell her Spark” is a great opener, but I can’t help but wonder what it would have sounded like with Dave Vanian on vocals? And that’s a thought that I just can’t shift, and it comes back to me intermittently throughout.

The fact is this could be an absolutely cracking Damned LP, and to court controversy, I rate it a better Damned LP than Evil Spirits, but lets not go there! As I’m blasting through the first few tracks, “Black Spider Memo man” for some strange reason hits at “Eloise” but at the other end of the scale “So long” smashes through the speakers more in tune with classic Who material, were the Who ever a garage rock band? Where as ‘Just a little Prick” runs everywhere from Pink Floyd to the kinks via the Beatles its ridiculously catchy and holding on to some classic influencers.

“DJ with half a Brain”, hits that Fuzztones vibe raw American garage rock, but presented from a typically British standpoint. I wonder as I’m listening through for the umpteenth time how great this would have been as a Damned track with Vanian to the fore, lets hope it can somehow be assimilated into a Damned live show. “Jam tomorrow” is a great track, different to everything that has come before, with some seriously cool guitar work from the Captain and a great keyboard run, hinting at Dub and Pschedelia with maybe a hint of the Orb within the samples.

Taking stock this is a seriously good LP, grounded in that guitar based underground rock that we’ve grown up with not afraid of experimentation, not afraid to push some boundaries, but at times I just wish certain tracks could have been recorded by the Damned! You’ll be able to pick them out.

There’s an early Syd Barrett quintessentially English vibe to “What’s the point of Andrew” a very definitive anti Royalist sentiment that any sane individual would wholeheartedly agree with, yes it takes the Piss.

“Fine Weather friend” could have been written for Dave Vanian, that name just keeps coming up, but when you listen the theatrics are just there, the vocal presentation is tailor made, again with some serious guitar work and a terrific locked down bass run. Next up “I married a monster” is a real burner, grounded in the underground, and “You and me” follows suite before we’re into LP closer ”Another world” weaving it’s way forward as a real slab of Psychedelia, an almost Eastern feel to the guitar led intro.

Great LP, now how do we persuade the Captain to hand over some of the vocal duties to his day job vocalist and introduce them to a Damned live performance?

Buy ‘Get Back Into The World’ Here

Author: Nev Brooks