THE RED PLASTIC BUDDHA

Sunflower Sesions

He has heard a lot of music in the last two thousand years, shaved skull, dark skin, big grin kicking down some cloudy Chicago back street in cool boots. A splinter of sunshine bounces back off his spectacles giving the impression of a man with white light mirrored eyes. He is listening to The Red Plastic Buddha’s “Sunflower Sessions” and smiles at the irony of the name: guitar riffs from a better age fill his ears to the brim, a west coast sound that topples dominoes of memory, and he is tumbling back through decades and sensations… a big old field, kids barefoot dancing.Chicago’s The Red Plastic Buddha are blessed with a big sound that gets blown up out of the earthly stratosphere by it’s equally big production, yet at the same time it somehow sounds but a stone’s throw from its alternative roots. In fact “Sunflower Sessions” released through Spade Kitty Records has you hooked within the first 10 seconds when the “1… 2… 3… waarrgh!” of opening track “Forget Me Not” screams out from your stereo. Combined with a cracking riff lifted right out of the mid-1960s, you’ll struggle to find a more infectiously sincere beginning to a record anywhere else.Thankfully the flying start is just a tiny fragment of what’s to come. In fact, one of the most interesting virtues of The Red Plastic Buddha is that they are a little bit of a lot of things. “Forget Me Not” is the perfect example – it sounds like a retro psychedelic pop song played by a modern alternative rock band. The finished picture treads a tightrope between technicolour light and technical dark and carries you on its shoulders effortlessly to the the other side. It’s a positive form of musical schizophrenia because it intelligently and emotionally appeals to both halves of your listening brain that need pleasing. For every inch of Beatlesque pop harmony on the killer chorus, there’s an equal measure of virtuoso guitar feedback to keep you on your toes. “Forget Me Not” sets the tone for ”Sunflower Sessions” by its ambiguities. The Red Plastic Buddha may appear on he surface like a polished sunshine psych band, but rather than pitching tent in any particular camp this collection of songs seem to reflect an accidental and commendable urge to burn through every credible guitar genre there is, like pied pipers at the gates of dawn. If this is the child of early Pink Floyd, then there’s just as much stadium Floyd in the gene pool too.The transition from “Forget Me Not” to second track “Rollercoaster” is the musical equivalent of someone drawing a black cloud of curtains across the sky. Swirling hammond organs, jagged Velvet Underground guitar, pounding drums, Jim Morrison vox, and has a xylophone melody ever sounded so menacing? By the end of the song, you’re not just curiously hooked, you’re happily strapped in and going nowhere until the journey reaches its logical conclusion. So where to next?Paradoxically the sun is out again on the catchy as fuck ”Clouds”, rolling like Tim Burgess fronting Canned Heat. Then you’re somewhere else altogether during the complex lovelorn ballad “Kerosene” when it suddenly becomes apparent that what this band are so brilliant at doing, is revisiting the sounds and ideas of the past and putting it in a thoroughly modern context. Feelings rise from the belly mirroring the mantra of “I watch you burn… I never learn” as the song races to an explosive finish.If it ended here then I’d be able to write this up as a pretty damn decent and diverse record to dip in and out of down the years, but perhaps predictably The Red Plastic Buddha save the best for last. “Over and Over” is both a songsmith’s song and something you’d expect to catch in the corner of your ear on a mainstream radio station. I’m talking credible mainstream here – a song of substance, reminiscent of Teenage Fanclub at their finest, back to The Byrds, and another staggering guitar crescendo to top it all off. It’s an exclamation of song at the end of a sunflower sentence – fragile, melodic, and very, very cool.The Red Plastic Buddha check so many boxes that you’d be forgiven for stopping and wondering how genuine it all is. Great band name? Check. Songs that sound like they were written in the 1960s? Check. A big modern production that put the songs in a frame they deserve? Check. Maverick, smiling frontman and creative mastermind in stripey Kinks trousers (Tim Ferguson) on the record sleeve? Check. Psychedelic enough? Check. Rock & Roll enough? Most definitely check. Pop enough? Probably definitely checkmate. It almost seems too good to be really true. But if you’re wondering then you should go back and listen to the songs and in particular the lyrics – the wrapping paper might be kaleidoscopic, but tear open the box of “what’s this all about then?” and when all is said and done “Sunflower Sessions” is a very human record that deals with primitive emotions like the breakdown of relationships, aspiration, apprehension, and love, love, love. That it happens to tick all those boxes is a groovy combination of luck forged by the raw unconsious talent for fusing styles and exploring possibilities. The bottom line is that this is a great little record with something for everyone, and songs that will put a smile on your face whenever you hear them for a long, long time.OMListen to “Forget Me Not” from “Sunflower Sessions”:

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