I’m still thinking about the stuff I missed in 2020, although the reality is that the wealth of music out there is so vast I could still be writing in September about last year, which isn’t particularly relevant – so I’ll keep my review of Danish band The Cosmic Rabbit Holes fairly brief. And if they already sound to you like a 60's / 70's influenced trippy psych band who might be found happily stoned in the corner of a hippy music festival, well fortunately that’s pretty much what they are – although for legal reasons I should point out that I have no evidence that any of them have ever been stoned, or even been to a music festival. Or are influenced by 60's bands. I think I’m covered.
They released their album, suitably titled, ‘The World is Drugs’ last September and I did listen to a couple of tracks at the time, before my mind raced off elsewhere. And it’s true that you do need to dedicate some time to this album, because melodically it won’t necessarily reach out and grab you on 1st listen, or maybe not even on the 2nd. But there’s something really natural about their sound, as if they’re so ‘at ease’ with the style of music that they’re playing, they could inadvertently drift off to sleep whilst doing so.
Having said that it won’t grab you for a few listens, opener ‘Silk Road Express’ actually did for me, because it has really defined melodic guitar parts and big harmonised vocals that bash out a big anthem of sorts. But the beautifully named ‘Drowning in Whipped Cream’ has a different feel, and it took a while before I became happily became lost in the dreamy instrumental sections.
‘The Echo Trees’ is the most obvious ‘hit’ on the album, and probably the best for that playlist, whilst ‘My Hawaiian Space Monoculars’ begins in quite a nondescript way, before blossoming some 2 minutes with a big euphoric chorus that is possibly the highlight of the album for me. There’s probably a little more than meets the eye with the title track, an instrumental piece that can just be enjoyed for the genuine clever musicianship.
‘Flowers’ is another track with a big anthemic chorus at its heart, and I love the twinkling notes at the start of ‘Lunatics’, and even if the track is a little pedestrian it flows into another gentle instrumental section, peacefully coming to a rest somewhere away from the madness of everything. 'Blissed-out' meanwhile is pretty much as the title suggests, whilst the album ends with ‘Rivers of Love’, a track to be enjoyed for the gently floating guitars as much as the very easy going melody.
This is definitely not a ‘hard hitting’ album, but I guess what I like about this is a band doing exactly what they want, with a tranquil and composed approach to their songwriting, the kind that would back up the Hitchhikers Guide’s view that humans are ‘mostly harmless’ after all. Of course the truth seems a little different to most of us unfortunately enough to be living here right now, but there’s no harm in any of us disappearing down a Cosmic Rabbit Hole once in a while, because this album continues to grow on me every time I listen to it.