GARRY GRAY and ED CLAYTON-JONES - We Mainline Dreamers LP

Highly recommended.

"With roots in some of Melbourne’s most iconic bands in the past (Sacred Cowboys and The Wreckery), the meeting of Garry Gray and Ed Clayton-Jones can only result in something quite special and anarchic – and it has. Their new collaboration teeters on the brink of chaos and order – a series of discursive, rambling musical notes that coalesce into something quite cathartic and engaging.

At the heart is a nautical tale of chaos and confusion, a rollicking set of stories bound by a wry poeticism and reverberated guitars that stumble and career like an inebriated sailor, and yet somehow manages to maintain an elegance and sufficiency replete with a rich vein of melody and atmosphere. From the rambling shuffle of ‘Mercury Retrograde’ to the balladry of ‘Life, Death, Infinity’ with its wailing, crying instrumentation to the grandeur of the title track, this is a glorious stuff.

At times, the duo veer close to a Rowland S Howard barbed-wire pop attack – witness ‘The Blood and Bone Man’ with its psychedelic shuffle, howling guitars and rousing chorus like a rabid preacher. The psychedelic esoteric side of the dial is touched in final track ‘Inside The Atom’ – a squeaky, rattling rambling journey into the heart of darkness that echoes inside the brain." - Backseat Mafia