More Info
Simply put this is the best unissued album this label or any other is ever likely to discover. A genuine masterwork that sounds like the lost classic it is. Exquisite songwriting with piano led art rock that conjure the best of early melancholc Elton John and 10cc, the songs are perfectly crafted and beautiful, the overarching sense of pathos is wreathed in an extraordinary wit, intelligence and literary sensibility. 79 minutes of genius.
The Great Crash went to Wales in 1970 and stumbled upon an abandoned mansion name Plas Llecha, moved in, and stayed for decades. They played a few local gigs, and simply chilled out in the crumbling aristocratic splendour and recorded their demos at their leisure. Polygram got wind of them, an American producer was whisked to Monmouthshire, and the band were coaxed reluctantly into a London studio..but they couldn't deal with it, and fled back to their mansion, unable to replicate in Polygram's studios what no one had heard, these brilliant brilliant songs.
50 years later we found the band members, and heard these tracks. unlike many other demos, we played them, then played them, then kept playing them. and the songs go round In the head like Stairway To Heaven or I'm Not In Love, or High Flying Bird, that masterpiece of Elton John's.
Algy Grays songwriting opens this album in sweeping resignation and pathos, their crowning glory 'Celebration Dinner" an exquisite jewel that conjures images of Tomaso's The Leopard, in some abstract way...Never Been So Long emerges like one of the world's greatest sad love songs, Regimental Reunion summarises a nation that gave back the greatest and largest empire the world has ever known, these stunning songs are acutely locked into a specific British sensibility and historical awareness, making the works unique. They are deeply literate but unpretentious, they manifest a brief Edwardian Arcadia, catching the sense that arises from finding dusty croquet sets and remembering that time, strawberries and cream, values, meaning, god and country, impossibly remembering ideas imbued in the national psyche.
Conversely later tracks written by member George Benn are Country inflected, but again some astonishing magic is at work here. If it's Country, it's something from a dimly remembered aristocratic Deep South, Gone With the Wind, wistful, sad, charmingly beguiling tracks...put into modern hands, some of these songs could become Hits. Others are so poetically English they may appeal only to those with a certain sensibility and frame of reference. As Deja Vu is to America, Deadfire Echoes is to Sainted Albion. Or so may it become. A double vinyl edition is also due later.
When The Great Crash gradually left their Mansion after decades there, it became Loco Studios, where the the ghosts of the Great Crash's songs swirled unknown around The Verve and Oasis as they recorded their 90s masterpieces. Unreservedly recommended.