Reviews

Artist: Pulco
Album: Undersea Adventure
Label: Folkwit
Tracks: 13
Rating: ***
Contact:  www.folkwit.biz

For some reason concept albums seem to be coming rarer than hens teeth. Quite why that is is anybody's guess. My money would be that it's a quite difficult thing today, restrict yourself to just one area for a whole album of music. The second, which may be related, is that as people have less of an attention span.
Pulco, the latest recording vehicle of former Derrero front man, Ash Cooke seems to be happy to take on the concept album with the sea as it's theme.
Pulco take an experimental approach to the album, folk/root themed, but with some decided different instrumentation. It's not just the music that has a left field feel, Cooke also takes a very individual slant to both the songwriting and presentation.
"Sardines" for example, gives you a history of the fish, how it came to be canned, as well as a few serving suggestions. It reminded me of the dangers of putting a microphone in front of Andy Cutting in a live set.
The experimental nature of the album means that it doesn't always hang well together. It would be too easy to simply dismiss the reason behind that as self indulgence, though I think that's part of it. Not that there's anything wron with self indulgence. An artist, perhaps more than anyone, has to be true to their selves or they're just going through the motions.
The main reason for it is that Ash Cooke knows where he was taking and undrstands the when, whys and hows. Percussion lead tracks with little in the way of perceptable tune chop and change with tracks that ave a more traditional feel. There's clutter provided by sounds that are not directly connected with the track, at least at the start and at first I found this off putting, but once I'd got used to it, I could see where it was going.
Undersea Adventure, is not an instant album, you're unlikely to get your toes tapping. There are some truly fantastic phrases, both of music and lyrics. There are other bits that take more than one listen and yet others that still do noting for me. Undersea Adventure is an album that keeps allowing me to discover new bits everytime I hear it and that to e is what a concept album is supposed to do.