Glasgow’s occult psych rockers go full on progressive folk on their darkly autumnal third album.
I was a fan of Glasgow’s Lucid Sin since their self-released debut debut Occultation in 2014. Ruaraidh Sanachan and Andreas Johnsson previously worked together on the drone/jam psych band called Moon Unit. Cursed! (2021) expanded on the bedrock of their roots in Deep Purple, Wishbone Ash and Blue Oyster Cult, adding jazzy elements, organs and strings. The new one veers into progressive folk territory like Fairport Convention and The Strawbs. I’ve always been a fan of Joe Boyd’s production on R.E.M.’s Fables of the Reconstruction (1985), and Dancing in the Dark evokes that eerie, autumnal vibe. For a while, Wolf People and The Warp/The Weft scratched that itch, but with the former broken up or on hiatus (Large Plants is coming out with a new one soon) and the other dormant for four years, this is the perfect album to kick off spooky season. It’s too bad they couldn’t match the sound with the cover art, like the century-old last one by illustrator Alan Odle.
The album starts with one of their best, “Jack of Diamonds,” lead by a deceptively mellow waltz beat, but includes a few different changes and a mournful guitar solo that makes the song sound like an epic journey despite being only 4:14 long. “The Dance” enters a simple, entrancing rhythm accented by tambourine, while “Take Me With You” dives deeper into jazz-rock than ever before. The guest vocal on “Sanctuary Stone” by Hanna Tuulikki evokes a more witchy Sandy Denny. “A Call in the Dark” extends that lost in the woods at night with terrifying noises all around feeling with a simple but catchy doom riff that Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats would be proud of. The way the vocals are recorded sometimes recalls Ghost before they jumped the shark.
The haunted atmospherics escalates with “Heavy Toll.” At this point it seems no one is getting out of these murky woods alive. The album concludes from strength to strength with the folky “The Raven’s Eye” and the clarinet-adorned psych prog on “Catch the Wild.” Highly recommend to fans of this year’s Blood Ceremony and Graveyard albums, this is a contender for Fester’s Lucky 13.
