Bearing in mind the quality of his work with THE BLUE ORCHIDS, Martin Bramah's career with the band has been sporadic, scattered and probably best described as 'chequered'.
The original line-up of the group (also featuring another ex-Fall emigre in keyboard player Una Baines) left behind a small, but influential body of work during the early to mid 1980s, but due to reasons too complicated to delve into here, the band took an extended sabbatical which would last until the early 1990s, when Bramah - with a new bunch of charges - relocated from Manchester to London to make what should have been the band's second album "The Sleeper". However, with interest at the time having shifted from Manchester to Seattle, the album never made the shelves at all. Bramah drifted off into different projects and The Blue Orchids seemed to face extinction.
That is until both Cherry Red and the estimable LTM labels thought to re-issue the band's material again over the past coupld of years, rekindling interest in this most under-rated of bands and belatedly culminating in the release of that great second Orchids' album, "The Sleeper" during 2003.
Anyone who heard that album realised instantly what an under-rated performer and songwriter Martin Bramah was, yet the question remained: after a break of a decade away from the fray (and a gap that even Stereo MCs might baulk at), could he be encouraged into making a third Orchids album, and more pertinently, would it be any good?
"Mystic Bud", then, answers these queries with 1) Yes and 2) Of course it'll be good - ye, of little faith. Having said that, you will need to do a little perception realignment if you're expecting a second instalment of the classy, sleek pop of "The Sleeper", as - while Bramah has retained bassist Stuart Kennedy and keyboard player Alastair Murphy from the "Sleeper" line-up - "Mystic Bud" is a far more intimate, secretive plant that grows gradually on you with repeated plays rather than flowering into something lustruous straight off.
So, yeah, "Mystic Bud" ain't quite what this reviewer had expected, but it's none the worse for that. It IS a more pastoral version of the band, though, with a reliance on semi-acoustic textures and new member Charlotte Bill's flute adding to the fragrant, often philosophical textures that live within these songs.
Indeed, there is an element of low-key, wistful English psychedelia to songs like "Earthling", the lovely "Bemused" and "Shining Brow", which - to this addled mind - reminds of Julian Cope's nakedly brilliant "Fried", even though Bramah plucks a banjo (of all things) on it.
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All of these songs are pretty, fragile and quite sublime, though even when Bramah and co introduce a pop sensibility of sorts to other selections like the opening "Soul Stuff" and "Angel Of The Loop", they still breathe the same rarefied, melody-filled air. The stately "Secret Of The Sacred Orchid", meantime, is possibly the closest Bramah has come to penning a ballad as such, framed as it is by Bill's ghostly flute, tambourine and Murphy's tremulous piano.
They do (sort of) let rip on a couple of occasions. "Freak Show" is a noisier excursion, with the blaring harmonica, shrill flute and ragtime piano adding raw blisters of dissonance, whilst the hilariously Pagan-influenced tale of cannibalism and sacrifice that is "Black Peg's Son" (sample lyric: "My toys were the bones of the souls lost on the moors/ And my playmates were the crows as I crawled on all fours") could almost be a Bronze Age Pennine version of The Velvets' "The Gift". Both tracks are driven along by Bud Umu's ruthlessly basic, Mo Tucker-style drumming, which will be another shock for anyone only familiar with the "Sleeper" material, though in fairness it works in the framework of these songs.
And talking of the Velvets, your reviewer couldn't sign off without mentioning the Orchids' magnificent, strung-out version of The Archies' "Sugar Sugar" (I kid you not), which is done with an opiated grace that only the Velvets (circa their third album) or possibly Low could be expected to attain. I don't know how serious Bramah is about it, but - against the odds - it's actually up there with the best of the album.
"Mystic Bud", then, side-stepped your reviewer's expectations to a degree. Instead of the brasher, poppier record he'd thought Bramah may make, we instead have an altogether more intimate album brimming with dark, but largely benign secrets, which beguile and reveal themselves all in good time. Nice one, Martin. Try not to leave us alone so long next time around.
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