All The Saints’ adherence to the ‘psychedelic rock’ catalogue doesn’t necessarily make them boring, so take your fingers out of your ears, because they’re not a just bunch of proggy hippies.
Intro To Fractions is interesting – as in the original definition of interesting, as opposed to the question-avoiding sort of interesting. It’s a mixture of vaguely dissonant landscapes ambulating in slow-mo and grungy riffs that one might almost, before putting them into perspective, label as ‘heavy’.
The whole album needs to be heard for the real gist of it to be got; otherwise, one is liable to remain under a false impression of simplicity when there are a number of instrumental explosions to be confused by.
Some of the lyrics can be hard to understand, but it’s the titles that are certainly enigmatic. Almost title-track ‘Intro To Fractions 1’ happens quite a long way into the record and, whilst it doesn’t have the most compelling of tempos, is really rather smooth.
Musically, nearly all of the songs have a thickly-textured layer of drums, bass, and repetitive rhythm guitar. As with a lot of psychedelia, the vocals are on a par with the other instruments so their preponderance need not tower over the rest.
A couple of the songs are in fact purely instrumental, allowing for some cool guitar solos to have their share of thunder, as in ‘Alteration’ or ‘Sunk Hill’. Enough bizarre instruments and passages that sound like lab experiments gone wrong are included for the album to sound trippy, but it’s still very, very precise; the drummer clearly had a lot to do with it, as did the sheer presence of the bass line in the mix.
Conclusion: sufficiently psychedelic but not lacking in originality or indeed in groove.
7/10
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