November 2, 2001

Black Nielson : Still Life Hear Me

If guitar music is essentially a creative cul-de-sac, Black Nielson have one of the better houses on the close...

7 / 10 Appealingly psychedelic British guitar weirdness
Indie - shambling, British, songs-about-bus-shelters - may be dead. But, indie - lo-fi, American, songs-about-God's-electric-infinity - is alive and well. On both sides of the Atlantic.

Black Nielson are skinny, sensitive boys from Southampton, Hampshire. They are neither American nor look like they spend a lot of time ingesting industrial-strength hallucinogens before shooting up some banjos in the woods. Nonetheless, they have
a suitably shaky hold on the double-dipped dynamics of psychedelic guitar rock.
'Calm Down, It's All A Dream' (the sort of fast pop song Grandaddy don't write enough of) and Hammond fantasia 'Lasoo The Moon' (sensible, less helium-addled- Mercury Rev) leave you in no doubt as to Black Nielson's influences, without descending into pastiche. Meanwhile, frontman/songwriter Michael Gale's wobbly navigation of his own melodies - his voice a fraying rope tying Ride's Mark Gardener to- Mercury Rev's Jonathan Donahue - seems vulnerable and real.
Not mind-bending, then. But,
if guitar music is essentially a creative cul-de-sac, Black Nielson have one of the better houses on the close.

Tony Naylor