It's New to Me: From Here You'll Watch the World Go By by the Legendary Pink Dots (1995)

Photo titled "Car Dealership in Keene, New Hampshire" by Anne Wardwell, 1975

In the law, there is a concept called the "attractive nuisance" - it's something like an abandoned car or big sand pile that is inherently dangerous to children but just too fun-looking to stay away from. I think it can also refer to a certain type of woman you meet at social functions. But there are bands that, to me, invoke the attractive nuisance doctrine - you know that they are going to be trouble, but what they are doing is just SO compelling. Take the Legendary Pink Dots, for instance - they're a mysterious post-psych-rock band that formed in London in 1980 around frontman Edward Ka-Spel (appropriately enough, they relocated to the even more intrigue-shrouded locale of Amsterdam in 1984 and have been recording there since. They've recorded over 40 albums, each (according to fans) quite different and strange from the others and requiring a set of warnings and caveats.

I found a copy of the Legendary Pink Dots' From Here You'll Watch the World Go By from 1995 in a used bin recently, and I could feel it calling to me like a water-filled rock quarry pit. But how could this album not disappoint me, when the music of the Legendary Pink Dots sounds so good as I imagine it in my head? I pulled the trigger anyway, and, doing some post-purchase research online, decided that I'd made the right call. Several people have written that it's a good entry point for aspiring Pink Dots fans.

Right off the bat, From Here You'll Watch the World Go By was hitting the right notes - the album started with "Clockwise", a lovely acoustic psych-rock number with some cool horns and keyboards - I'd worried about the Pink Dots having a sax player (named Niels Van Hoornblower!) in its lineup, but right away I was thinking, "I can deal with this." But I was wrong, and I should have known I would be. The sounds of "Clockwise" are never repeated on the album until the closing track, the also-lovely "This Hollowed Ground". In between these two tracks, the band covers a lot of territory - a LOT of territory, never going to the same place twice. It has a spoken-word synth epic ("A Velvet Resurrection"), a chugging rock number ("Remember Me This Way"), a druggy dance number ("1001 Commandments"), a minimalist acoustic ballad ("Friend") and a three-minute almost-silent ambient track ("Kollusim").

I don't take to all these styles with equal enthusiasm (I could do without the ambient track entirely), but the Legendary Pink Dots' enthusiasm for these different styles makes for compelling listen. The fourteen-minute "This One-Eyed Man Is King/Straight On 'Til Morning" suite tried my patience a little, but the album came close to being a best-possible mix of surprising, interesting, and listenable. Ka-Spel's lyrics are just the kind of psychedelic craziness that I love, with some nice storytelling mixed in, and his reedy Syd-like vocals are a good fit for the music as well. I think I might be hooked, if somewhat disappointed with how large sections of their discography seem to be hard to acquire, but at the very least I'm going to try to track down one of their '80s records that people rave about.

"Clockwise" by the Legendary Pink Dots