Somewhere back in the mists of time. I remember hearing the name of Traquair. A minstrel was he with a penchant for song titles that suggested a connection with the mystical. Time aplenty has passed but Traquair abides, and he has duly returned with a band called The Tranquilizers and an album called “DNA of a Distant Memory”.
Those spaced out song titles are still his trademark – “One Step Away from My Furthest Memory” was my personal lexical favourite – and all eight songs on “DNA of a Distant Memory” are, as you might expect, blessed with a moniker that might make you think you have been transported back to trippier times but, you might ask, are they truly transcendental? Well, sort of. “The Moon is Following Me” certainly aims itself at spiritual positivity and very nearly achieves commerciality on its journey there but the other songs too often hide their constituent lyrics in the murk as if to disguise their meaning or, perhaps, to prevent close analysis and, as such, reminded me of the kind of musical oddities that George Harrison played with back in his psychedelic days.
Maybe that is the point. “DNA of a Distant Memory” sounds like a lost album from the tail end of the sixties and, as such, might well be best experienced as part of a herbally induced time warp that replaces the emptiness of our modern times with a third generation cassette copy of those halcyon days. At the end of the day, it’s all a matter of introspection.
The album is available from Bandcamp