Explore Rights Management 2023
Think Pink V
Legendary drummer goes back to where it all began to blind the listener with a fresh serving of psychedelic delicatessen.
An underground luminary, John Alder always seemed to see himself as a team player – at least, back in the day, when he was progressing from TOMORROW to THE PRETTY THINGS, to PINK FAIRIES, to STARS – yet the singing skin-hitter’s 1970 solo debut somehow became a cult classic. However, when the veteran turned “Think Pink” into a series in 2015, a decade after he embraced Islam, some fans may have expected glimpses of Sufi wisdom from the artist presently known as Mohammed Abdullah – only the name “Twink” on the covers of his latter-day records suggested otherwise. The project proved to be rather uneven, if invariably alluring, but while its previous installments reflected more recent influences, the fifth volume finds the drummer in the pink, harking back to the very start of his career.
To feel this original vibe, one doesn’t have to wait until the platter’s raga-smeared finale “Revolution Now” – that sounds like a mantra-shaped addendum to the “Tomorrow” album’s centerpiece – because the old-timey, yet still fresh, psychedelia is manifested from the beginning, once Twink’s spoken-word intro and tentative metallic ring give way to his partner-in-crime Ed Sykes’ sitar-emulating guitar to offer everyone the hypnotic groove of “Sun Is A Star” and signal the launch of a new cosmos. It would be shaken ‘n’ stirred to release the deceptively aggressive rave of “Love Is A Killer” whence sharp riffs protrude to propel the main man’s predatory voice towards the dancefloor, before the piano-driven “Silver White Horses” unfolds a pulsing, lush panorama of a lysergically enhanced reverie, and the pensive “Fool Moon” smears such a riveting image with English greyness.
There’s a romantic thread running through the songs too, Alder’s tenderly intoning sentimental lines in the transparent “All I Need Is You” and filling the electric swirl behind “My Rose” with Eastern elegance; and then there is electronica-enveloped and folk-informed spiritual trance of “Rainbow Warriors” – which stitches the past to the future and namechecks John’s fellow dreamers over intricate percussive patterns – and “Neptune’s Tune” which rocks ‘n’ rolls its way across acidic effervescence. But nothing, perhaps, can compare to “Lost And Found” in terms of acoustic space-outness that paints Twink in timeless paisley. And indeed, as a creator he’s not been affected by the passage of time since the ’60s, inhabiting an individual world and inviting followers to share this experience: a one-of-kind musician, long may his thinking continue to excite the listener.
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