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Pink Fairies – Screwed Up (Cleopatra Records) – Brrrrring briiing, ‘ello there, turned on the Teeeveee and what did I see? That’s a rather decent version of Hawkwind’s Hassin I Sahba, an almost deviant version you might say, wasn’t expecting that (I hadn’t looked at the track listing), Hawkwind and Pink Fairies have of course always been very (very) closely related, those Pinkwind gigs and what have you. This particular Pink Fairies album, a new album featuring a line up led by founding Fairy Paul Rudolph alongside long standing Hawk bass player Allan Davey and original Motorhead drummer Lucas Fox – Motorhead back there at the start of their life were of course pretty much a Pinkwind line up with the Wind’s Lemmy and Larry Wallis from the Fairies in there with the aforementioned Lucas Fox and yes, this new Pink Fairies album has more than enough of that classically deviant 70’s proto-on-the-edge-of-punk Ladbrooke Grove West London counterculture sound about it. I guess this is a follow up to 2018’s Resident Reptiles and yes Paul Rudolph might have been out of the Fairies line up more than he was in it after his first departure in ’72 (yes he was always around and a Deviant as much as a Fairie and yes he was part of Hawkwind’s Astounding Sounds perios as well as part of Calvert’s Lucky Lief line up) but this feels like, in these days of dubious Gong line ups and such, a more than legitimate a more than right version of the Fairies.

There was of course an EP called Screwed Up released (back in the glory days of Stiff back when nothing else was worth an f…) by Mick Farren and The Deviants, and yes, you are right, this is that self same Screwed Up (got to say Cleopatra release some damn good stuff but they’re rubbish in terms of even the basic of basic information about their fine releases, no mention of any of this bavkground to the album and what Screwed Up is on their website or their Bandcamp page). A new Pink Fairies album then but what is going on here? Maybe Farrah Fawcett-Majors can come and rescue us? Yes, imdeed, this attempt at a review is probably a danger to itself, it probably is laced with digital sins right out of the garbage bin and I might not have it all right but I can atleast tell you WhatChaGonnaDo is nothing to do with Franky Rizardo (I think I got that bit right?)

So here we are in some kind of perfumed gardens of delight somewhere in the future, somewhere near the year 2023 and we have, of all things, a new Pink Fairies album freshly recorded at the end of last year – yes, I do have that bit right, did just check that, got it direct from the horse’s mouth, or at least the drummer’s, Lucas tells us it was recorded in Vancouver, Death Valley CA and in Burgundy at the end of 2022. (thanks for the quick reply Lucas, don’t you just love social media, what evils?)

I feel like I should know It Came From Zeta 77073 from somewhere or other (or at least where the title comes from), a two minute slice of classic Sci-fi flavoured instrumental space rock that gives way to a fully crazed funky spunky chunky track called Punky that rather sounds like something you might have heard at a Roundhouse all-dayer somewhere around 1976, a track alive with those classic Hawkwind baselines. Hey, I recognise the tittle track and the Mick Farren commentary, and everyone will recognise the cover of Hassin I Sahba and well most of what we find here sounds like it could be from the Faries/Deviants/Hawkwind/Motorhead catalogue from back there in the mid 70’s – that can be taken as a compliment as much as anything else, that was a glorious period – and I’m not going to pretend I know enough to know how much of this new album is actually new material and how much of it, like the title track, is material from back then, I really don’t know, things like Big Pink Chopper sound like they’re very much from right now and I could go look in the digital garbage bin, but hey, if they’re going to sing about the evils of social media then I guess it is very much mostly from right now and not a vision of out internet-dominated from back then (then again, Pinkwind did foresee a lot of it back then, there were a lot of forward looking visionaries on the Pinkwind team…). And anyway, what yah gonna do when the cops (or the internet police) turn up (In a police car, a hungry black and white). a lot of it if feels very then but it all feels rather here and now and alive with freshly grown floating anarchy and yes, worth the admission price for that killer version of Hassin I Sahba alone.

Always love that Screwed Up EP from Mick Farren and the Deviants, that song (from ’77) more than deserves to be given another flight nearly half a century later and yes he probably did foretell all this in the Text of The Festival or some such place.

So, a new Pink Faries album in 2023? Really? Are you sure? Sure, it all sounds a little far fetched and if I was to jump into the Organ time machine that we keep here outside our Hackney bunker and fly (sideways) back to a mid Seventies Roundhouse and tell them what we’ve been listening to today here in the rian-soaked summer of 2023 then they’d laugh me out of the place, they’d probably say that that was outrageous and that I had something contagious (they’d certainly not believe this was recorded sometime not that long after the whole world had just come out of a great big lockdown and that there had been no gigs anywhere on the planet for more than a year, they’d laugh their heads off if we told them any of that had happened). Hey, this is a damn good album.

This really is a damn good album, it feels more than good enough to be taken (very) seriously, more than good enough to have that illustrious band name (and a rather fine pig) on the front cover – Dreamzzz is rather beautiful , Dreamzzz deserves a mention – yes indeed, this is London mid 70’s counterculture proto=punk still flying high, this is properly good Pink Fairies right here and right now, right here in the middle of climate crisis future shock flipped up all-going-to-hell while the Tories cound up how much they made out of it all 2023. Just what kind of world are we living in?

Actually this is a really well balanced well put together album (there is an art to putting an album together) , this is an album that flows so well as one whole thing, the balance of the then and now, the yin and yang, the space rock and the proto-punk, the bite and the reflection, the whole thing as one body, a proper album. A properly proper Pink Faries album (great cover art as well, you can’t beat the three flying pigs but this is right up there). Turns out we still need ’em in ’23, turns out we still need the Fairies to lead us all, te city kids and the rst of us, astray – by the way Simon House is on here somewhere and yes, following on from Hawkwind’s own return to form with their latest rather rewarding album released earlier this year, this is a rather fine Pink Faries flight. yes you are advised to rush out and find it, don’t forget to lock your gate as you do rush out, run run, no, hang on, walk don’t run, go trace that record, reboot, take the choice, what a bunch of sweeties. Pink Fairies sounding rather good in 2023, who’d have thought it? Ridiculous, get back in yer time machine anf bugger off to whereever you came from, The Damned are on next.

Nice one Pink Faries, now where did I put that new Twink album? All sounding good, think pink, nothing screwed up here, you might even find yourself with a grin on your face when there’s no one else around, the point has now been laboured, damn good new Pink Fairies album, on we fly…. (sw) 

Links: Bandcamp / Cleopatra

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Oh I can’t resist parking this here as well…