Driving and stomping rocker from Northern Ireland
Label: Reflection
Year of Release: 1970
The group Andwella's Dream are probably well known to most psychedelic collectors, having produced the absurdly rare and highly sought after "Love and Poetry" LP for CBS in 1969. Progressive and often bordering on heavy, the record has since been reissued on a number of occasions.
Their post-CBS career has been less well appreciated and explored, however, and that's possibly because it's simply not as daring or interesting. Perhaps learning from the fact that the more challenging aspects of their sound caused their sales to stay low, they stripped out the embellishments and became a poppier proposition.
I can understand that this sounds like appalling news, but actually some of their singles are slamming little affairs, not least this one which sounds like Wings before Wings were ever actually "a thing". Stomping, leaden beats combine with confident, joyous vocals and slamming guitar chords, and only a slightly dull production stands in the way of the record entirely succeeding. Strain your ears, and you can almost hear the glam rock storm coming over the horizon.
Andwella - or Andwella's Dream if you prefer - at this point consisted of Dave Lewis on guitar, piano, organ and vocals, Dave Struthers on bass and vocals, and Jack McCulloch (of Thunderclap Newman fame) on drums. The group managed three LPs in their career. Besides the acclaimed "Love and Poetry" on CBS were "World's End" and "People's People" on Reflection, which sold slightly better than their debut but only by incremental levels.
They split not long after the failure of "People's People", and Lewis went on to record solo LPs, while McCulloch joined White Line with his brother Jimmy McCulloch. Sadly, Dave Lewis passed away on 13th March 1998.
No comments:
Post a Comment