SIREN KEVIN COYNE STRANGE LOCOMOTION 1971 DANDELION LP

£ 28

$ 37

£ 28 Sold For

Jan 12, 2013 Sold Date

Jan 2, 2013 Start Date

£ 25 Start price

2 Number Of Bids

Great Britain Country Of Seller

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Description

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SIREN (KEVIN COYNE) ‘STRANGE LOCOMOTION’ 1971 DANDELION LABEL VINYL LP IN GATEFOLD SLEEVE

Sleeve Condition: Near Mint; free from any kind of stickers, marking, writing, defect or damage. It’s particularly nice to find a predominantly white sleeve in so clean a condition.

Record Condition: Near Mint. The record has obviously been very, very rarely played. Free from marking or evidence of wear or play. Plays perfectly.

Given all that Kevin Coyne went on to achieve in his own right, his apprenticeship in Siren remains just that, a learning curve that brought out only occasional flashes of his later acerbity, while the band blues-boogied along behind him. But what flashes they are, from the effortless churn of "Relaxing With Bonnie Lou," with its invocation of Coyne's later "Eastbourne Ladies" shamelessly doing the can-can behind it, to the Stax-y soul of the title track, an R&B shouter in everything but the R&B. And the shouting.

Both are models to which the singer would eventually return, but it's the all-but-unaccompanied "Some Dark Day" and the slurring folk of "Soon" that best pinpoint Coyne's solo ambitions, with the suggestion that his cracked tone and twisted vision need nothing more than the most spartan accompaniment to drive their point home.

Indeed, the occasions when the rest of the band does stretch out -- the (possibly overlong) seven-minute "Fetch Me My Woman," for example -- effectively sideline Coyne altogether, as Mick Gratton's guitar chases the quaalude rhythm and the singer simply yowls around him. "Squeeze Me," meanwhile, closes the album with the kind of heads-down rock'n'rave routine that went down fabulously in concert. The majority of the album's deficiencies, however, are those detected only after years spent listening to Coyne's later work. Placed in the context of its time, in a world where Led Zeppelin had already taken the post-blues boom as far as it could go, Strange Locomotion at least flags a few interesting side roads and makes a couple of dark diversions as well.

Tracklist

Relaxing With Bonnie Lou