The Soup Dragons - Lovegod mp3 album

Covering The Rolling Stones’ title music I’m Free to make it their own version off the begins to be known by public as the newer genre of UK Dance-Pop or Baggy Alternative Music from The Soup Dragons whom coming proudly, letting the world knows about Scotland Rock scene has brought them to the surface of mainstream – closer but not selling out yet. Produced by Sean Dickson and George Shilling; the second studio recording led the band of four as Paul Quinn (drums, percussion), Sushil K Dade (bass), Jim McCullough (guitars) and Sean Dickson as featuring Junior Reid the rapper – re-arranged the exact Jangling-Pop dance beats over Mick Jagger/Keith Richards written numbers along with the rest of their own repertoire like Drive The Pain, Lovegod, Dream-E-Forever, Beauty Freak onto Sweetmeat a worldly looks and a listen to the audiences to have Lovegod - their favorite records for the perfect evolved timing for Alternative world to change.

Unfortunately, this was the Soup Dragons' most popular album. Despite that giddy late-1980s indierock-meets-electronic production style and loopy psychedelic club beatnik vibe, I now find it largely unappealing. On the positive side, there are some terrific guitar riffs, a handful of wonderful beats, some inspired samples (including the "HEAD" soundtrack by The Monkees with the help of Jack Nicholson's dialogue collages from the film), but really...it's dragged down by the clunky songwriting, tired/trite lyrics, and ill-suited vocals. I think it's the song structures and vocals that really fail to connect. Sean's vocals occasionally work (or don't detract), but a good 75% of the time he sounds vaguely louche, or as though he's just heard a truly unpleasant story from a friend at a party, but tries to forget it so he can seduce a girl he just met. And the songs don't really go anywhere or do anything particularly right or dynamic. It's, well, sort of a bland soup in the end. While the Soup Dragons deserve kudos for diving into the hybrid indie/dance sound before many of their contemporaries, it wasn't a fully successful recipe for them, and the results are hugely inconsistent. The singles "I'm Free", "Electric Blues", and "Divine Thing" were all very pleasant pop diversions...but maintaining quality control over full albums seemed to elude Dickson et al, as on "Lovegod".

Both "Drive The Pain" & "Love You To Death" always put a smile on my face.