Album Review: The Chemistry Set – An Introduction to The Chemistry Set

My introduction to The Chemistry Set was a 2022 album called Pink Felt Trip. Really fine stuff, and recommended. If you’re not already hip to their sounds, your introduction, gentle reader, could and should be a new 2CD set straightforwardly titled An Introduction to The Chemistry Set. For more than a decade now, the UK group launched by Dave McLean and Paul Lake has been making period-correct psychedelia. The group’s stylistic palette is wide and vivid, drawing from both the pop and whacked-out ends of the multi-color psych spectrum. Listeners perusing The Chemistry Set’s catalog will discover tunes that echo early (Lost Chord) era Moodys, early-early (Syd-period) Floyd. The group’s body of work is filled with gems, most any of which could be slipped seamlessly into a playlist built around The Great British Psychedelic Trip, Nuggets II: British Empire and Beyond or similarly-orientated collections. And this collection draws from the best of the group’s output.

Some tunes rock gently. Others storm along, riffing mercilessly. What most of the tracks share is a sonic and lyrical aesthetic that places them in and around 1968. And the ones that don’t will appeal to fans of Stone Roses and/or Kula Shaker (in other words, listeners with good taste). Original tunes are mixed into a non-chronological set of tunes along with inspired covers. Unless you’re a serious, serious psych aficionado, you won’t know which is which. (Okay: you’ll spot “Dear Mr. Fantasy” as a Traffic cover.) But you’re likely to dig all. For listeners who dig Dukes of Stratosphear, Orgone Box, select releases from the wonderfully prolific Anton Barbeau, or most anything from Julian Cope, An Introduction to The Chemistry Set is a luxurious trip indeed. It is thus most enthusiastically recommended.