There's a strong superficial resemblence to Mercury Rev stretched across this debut full length release from Anglo-American psychedelicists The Earlies, particularly in the beautiful, cheerfully titled, opening number, "One Of Us Is Dead". Nevertheless, while Mercury Rev's music carries with it the sights, sounds and smells of nature in all its pure, untouched power and glory, despite the pastoral flutes that abound in tracks like "Slow Man's Dream", there is something about The Earlies that is decidedly urban. Album highlight "Morning Wonder" not simply an ode to the beauty of nature; it is the sound the sun rising over the grey blocks of flats, dimming streetlights and quiet high streets, slowly filling with morning commuter traffic.

As you might expect from an album compiled from various EP tracks recorded and released over a period of a couple of years, there are moments where it lacks coherence, and you get the impression that sometimes The Earlies are more interested in the heady business of fashioning soaring harmonies and spacey sounds than they are in the tedious business of actually writing songs. There are further moments, as on "The Devil's Country" when the drugs get the better of them and incongruous trumpets and saxophones jump out of the shadows to assail your ears, but fortunately they do so attached to something dangerously near a tune and it turns out to be one of the best tracks on the album.

If The Earlies can get their act together and write a real album full of proper songs, you know, like Mercury Rev, then they'll be something to watch, but on the basis of this collection, they are still at the stage labelled "promising". -Ian Martin, Feb.22.05.

These Were The Earlies