Up Home!

"Baby Milk Snatcher," the lead cut, eventually surfaced on the wonderful 69 album but sounds just as good here, its very specifically dub-touched rhythm and echoes meshing with the more immediately familiar feedback scrapes and sonics of the band, not to mention Rudi's always lovely voice. The next number, the wittily and bitterly titled "W.O.G.S.," has a soft loping rhythm to it "floating," to quote it directly -- while singing and acoustic & electric music both combine in another beautiful, uniquely A.R. Kane wash. "One Way Mirror" has a crisp but still funky groove to it, not quite the dance-friendly elements of future releases surfacing yet but hinting at it, while the band create more trademark oceanic rock over it. The best is saved for the last -- "Up," arguably the best song the band ever did, is a six-minute slow rise up, as the lyrics put it, "on a stairway to heaven." With a simple but heartbreaking series of electric guitar notes tracing a soft filigree throughout, and huge amounts of echo and effects fleshing out the overall mix, Rudi sounds like he's being bodily assumed into paradise, and why not? ~ Ned Raggett