After discovering Ten Foot Wizard as a KISS / stoner-rock driven psychedelic Manchester-based outfit, I am now steered into the direction of Heavy Salad whose single It’s OK To Bleed is the precursor for this month’s debut album “Cult Casual” through Dipped In Gold Recordings.
Heavy Salad, formed in 2018 around the central core of Lee (The Moonlandingz) Mann, Rob Glennie, and Allan Hutchinson, are self-described as a mix of surf-rock (a la Dick Dale, The Ventures, etc), free-jazz, over-driven pop, and experimental rock. The first upload to their BandCamp page was Routine Dream in April 2019, with Battery Acid the following August, Reverse Snake last May, and The Wish in July. Their line-up changed with every release, as well: Dream and Wish was just the three of them; Acid had eight, and Snake had seven.
On this record they’re joined by The Priestesses (Ally McBoo, Esther Naylor and Elizabeth Lucy Hope) and Oscar Remers, whose collective influences stretch across five decades from the 1960s to the 2000s to include such luminaries as The Flaming Lips, The Beatles, Super Furry Animals, Blur, and QOTSA. It’s OK To Bleed introduces the forthcoming album with a country-rock almost-ballad with the emphasis more on the rock than the country and some gorgeous backing vocals from The Priestesses. The Official Video features the sextet relaxing in a nighttime beach picnic setting under the cliffs.
DEATH opens the album with a 6’00” Zappaesque doo-wop number which augers well for a band self-described as stoner / psychedelic. Battery Acid is the first of the previous releases and is very late 90s/early 00s mainstream-radio friendly, featuring the horn-section of Andrew (saxes) Morel, Jack (trumpet) Tinker, and Chris (trombone) Bridges and the full vocal backing of The Priestesses with Jardine Emmanuel Sage.
The Wish follows with a bare-boned Foo Fighters-styled rocker, followed by the 1990s post-punk Inner Versions along the lines of Machine Gun Fellatio and Nancy Vandal. Reverse Snake (my stand-out) combines those styles with a slightly dischordant Floyd Vincent and the Child Brides, and Franz Ferdinand and/or The Killers.
High Priestess harkens back to the 90s and straight-ahead almost shoe-gazer Nirvana-meets-Crash Test Dummies rock with its emphasised punchy, top-heavy Krist Novoselic bass-line and stripped-back Kurt Cobain guitar-licks. Nice anvil solo!
This Song Is Not About Lizards returns to, and more heavily applies, the Zappa influence of DEATH while retaining some of the Wish, Snake, and Priestess ideals and adding a dash of Aladdin Sane–vocal effects through the chorus. It may not be about lizards, but its subject matter remains a mystery, like much of Frank’s work!
Routine Dream comes back to the Franz Ferdinand and The Killers stylings; Slow Ride introduces punters to the influences behind Mental As Anything, The Drugs, Marc Bolan / T. Rex, and Teddy Sexuals whether they know this or not, and mix in some Brian May-on-“Queen II“-guitar work. It’s OK To Bleed rounds out the debut relatively quietly and quite suddenly, letting us know that it is actually the end, and giving us the option of replaying or moving along. The Big Dirty had the same problem segging Sensual Lover into their album “The Sex” but It’s OK To Bleed links in well with “Cult Casual”, I think: it would have upset the flow of the record elsewhere, being a better outro than intro.
It is a great thing that bands are less reliant on radio today, and that there are the streaming services like Band Camp, Sound Cloud, Deezer, and so on. What radio fails to pick up is still widely available to adventurous punters who, happily, also don’t listen to the radio as much any more. Rock, post-punk, and psychedelic-music lovers will enjoy Heavy Salad. Radio stations that want to support them will also find a new audience: no risk with that!