A new year always means one (or more) new albums by The Legendary Pink Dots. This year starts very good for the faithful fans of Edward Ka-Spel and his collaborators, because not one but two new albums have seen the light. Next to “All The king’s Horses” there is also “All The King’s Men” released. The titles of these albums are taken from the nursery rhyme about Humpty Dumpty and are evidence of the thematic similarity of the two records. This album, All The King’s Horses, is the quiet one of the two.
This album opens very nice and atmospheric with the song ‘The Unlikely Event’. A quiet piano tune in which the story is told of a person who uses a cellphone from an airplane that is going to crash. When it comes to textual content the band is still up to date, as it seems. Musically All The King’s Horses is (luckily) a bit less modern, because this time there are no breakbeats like on the album Nemesis Online. After this intro the album goes into well known Pink Dots territory with ‘The Way I Feel’. This song is a bit neurotic with the childlike, but also weird, voice of Edward Ka-Spel and at the right times atmospheric elements.
All The King’s Horses is for the rest an album in the best tradition of The Pink Dots, dark psychedelic and poetic music with weird and circus-like (‘Daisy’) intermezzos. The best songs are ‘It’s The Real Thing’, a sad clown-like song, and ‘Lisa Goes Surfing’, an almost 60’s folk songs, like the Dutch troubadour Boudewijn de Groot used to make.
The Legendary Pink Dots have never made a really disappointing album. Every band that keeps playing this long do have a few minor and better albums. All The King’s Horses is definitely one of the better albums among The Pink Dots repertoire.
(USA: Caciocavallo / Soleilmoon, Europe: S.P.K.R.)