{"id":380,"date":"2010-11-16T07:41:11","date_gmt":"2010-11-16T12:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=380"},"modified":"2026-07-03T09:14:44","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T13:14:44","slug":"album-review-legendary-pink-dots-seconds-late-for-the-brighton-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2010\/11\/16\/album-review-legendary-pink-dots-seconds-late-for-the-brighton-line\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Legendary Pink Dots – Seconds Late for the Brighton Line"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Legendary Willfully obscure and moody, The Legendary Pink Dots<\/strong> are not among pop music’s musically most accessible acts. With a gloomy, foreboding minimalist approach built around synthesizers and spooky arrangements, the songs all feature the vocals of Edward Ka-Spel<\/strong>. His gothic-inflected delivery is sort of a cross between Roger Waters<\/strong> and Robert Smith<\/strong>. And though LPD’s avant-garde music doesn’t sound very much like either Pink Floyd<\/strong> or the Cure<\/strong>, in fact there are some sonic connections.<\/p>\n

With an alumni list that rivals King Crimson<\/strong> in its length, Legendary Pink Dots have been making their brand of experimental noise since 1980. A specific count would require too much work, but Seconds Late for the Brighton Line<\/em> is something like the band’s 80th album.<\/p>\n

To call the tracks on Seconds Late for the Brighton Line<\/em> “songs” is to apply something of a misnomer; the nine cuts are more mood pieces that slowly develop. Sometimes they go places musically, other times they’re static. But never boring: think Brian Eno<\/strong>‘s Another Green World<\/em> era work, but with an unremitting air of doom and dread.<\/p>\n

On record and in concert, the musical centerpiece of LPD is Phil “The Silverman” Knight<\/strong>; his keyboards give the songs their particularly sinister sonic bent. Guitars weave in and out of the mix, but more often than not are used as an effect rather than a melodic component. Elements of krautrock are a recurring feature of the group’s approach. And during the instrumental passages on Seconds Late<\/em>, the group sounds a bit like the Residents<\/strong><\/a> circa The River of Crime<\/em>.<\/p>\n

When I saw the band in 2006<\/a> on their 25th anniversary (25 years of touring, that is) swing through the USA, a central fixture of the group was horn player Niels van Hoornblower<\/strong> (his real name? I somehow doubt it). But he’s gone from the group now, and so the LPD sound is returned to its core of synth bleeps and Ka-Spel’s warbling about abattoirs and whatnot. The disc’s highlight is the malevolently droning “God and Machines,” wherein squalls of feedback are made into something grotesquely beautiful, something approaching Glenn Branca<\/strong>‘s no-wave excursions into noise. “No Star Too Far” is a spoken-word piece vaguely reminiscent of Public Image Limited<\/strong> crossed with Tangerine Dream<\/strong>. Yikes.<\/p>\n

Don’t plan on coming away from your time spent with Seconds Late for the Brighton Line<\/em> humming any melodies or quoting too many of Ka-Spel’s stridently enunciated lyrics. But neither should you plan on coming away unaffected. Taken as a whole, the eerie experience of listening to this album is ultimately a rewarding one. Just keep something else more musically upbeat at hand for afterward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Willfully obscure and moody, The Legendary Pink Dots are not among pop music’s musically most accessible acts. With a gloomy, foreboding minimalist approach built around synthesizers and spooky arrangements, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31819,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions\/31819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}