There is surely nothing more appealing to the ear than hearing the song of the birds as the sun rises. Yet the sun rises but once a day so such pleasures are fleeting and, as every carnivore knows, meat must be consumed in the meantime and where else would be a better place to look for meat on the bone than Bloke’s new album “Living Without Expectations.”
There surely is something stronger than an oxo cube powering this album as you can’t make a guitar sound this grungy on a diet of lentils and split peas. No doubt, also, that the Bloke tour bus smells of something herbal as these five songs – well, four of the five anyway – roll with the incessant intent so beloved of tripping krautrock bands enjoying the fruits of psychedelia on their journey. There are words in there too but more in an existential form as their meaning is transposed using reverb into murk of the mind. The fifth of the five? “Tomorrow” is more of a trippy, reflective thing like a head song, as the bards of the sixties might say, that sweeps rather than stomps and might even remind the sensitive, after a “road” trip, of Bob Dylan.
Yesterday is the new today and this, baby, is where it is at. So don’t let the man bring you down. Long live the revolution. Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. You know it makes sense. Bloke sense.