Keith Richard Crain

The Psychedelic Gods said “Let there be sound”, and there was sound.Triptacular, primal, headmelting, sonic melodies that brought them to their knees beneath the holy strobe of kaleidoscopic colour. And The Psychedelic Gods heard it was good - so very fucking fine - but after several triptacular, primal, headmelted, sonic hours of said melodies, they could no longer hear themselves dream and commanded the sound to stop. And stop it did.But then, as they closed their drug-heavy eyelids weighed down with cosmic visions, they heard something within the thick folds of silence, just a guitar and a voice entwined in The Void. The guitar was acoustic, with uncut strings that rattled magically together, rolling out beautiful and simple lines lifted from faraway days when girls wore flowers in their hair (and some men did too). The voice was simply beautiful, young and gently carrying the timeless wordstreams of one Bob Dylan. The Psychedelic Gods heard it was good and kept their drug-heavy eyelids closed, and as they collectively began remembering, smiles broke out like old black and white flowers on their faces.Now I’m no Psychedelic God, but that’s pretty much how I feel whenever I listen to Sucks To LaLa Land. As a singer/songwriter, Visalia’s Keith Crain effortlessly loads his songs with promise - here is the unmistakable sound of unconscious raw talent, finding its feet and growing all the time. Cover versions are perhaps an essential part of this process, the study of great songs, dismantling them and singing them again for fun. Even more amazing, is that Keith somehow makes other people’s songs his own, born again in the eardrums, yet armed with the minimum of tools. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still holding out for the first collection of original songs, but in the meantime these eight cover versions of Dylan classics will keep us ticking over expectantly. As an introduction to the sounds of Sucks To LaLa Land, Dylan and Crain are a perfect fit - legendary words of the past reppearing in the present, sung by a brilliant brand-new voice. This isn’t a lazy re-take with a postmodern production twist craving thirty minutes of listening time and fifteen minutes of fame, it’s an unintentional free tribute to an old master that accidentally becomes a bedroom floor testament to a rising star.Okay, so Dylan isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but arguably his biggest stumbling block has always been his voice. Bob Dylan was a poet rolled into a songwriter - it logically follows that even the most ardent cynics could potentially find something to love on this record with a different voice behind the wheel. There is no guarantee that the best hand-glider makers make the best hand-glider pilots. Keith Crain is undoubtedly one of the best hand-glider pilots I know - he doesn’t take chances, he just… well he glides doesn’t he? And it’s a joy to behear.For those of you (like me) whose lives were explosively altered and reconfigured by Bob Dylan when you were well under thirty, there is plenty to get excited about. It’s hard to tell if the song choices are pure gold, or whether raiding the Dylan back catalogue is inevitably going to produce results, or even if it’s just that Keith could turn his attention to anything and make it sound that way (check out Daydream Generation 4 for a diamond acoustic version of Radiohead’s “Creep”). Songs like “All I Really Wanna Do” and “It’s Alright Ma” sound suddenly alive again, like hearing them for the first time over. Elsewhere, “Love Minus Zero”, “He Was A Friend Of Mine”, and “Song To Woody” incredibly sound as if they were written for Sucks To LaLa Land to sing.Curiously for an artist, Keith himself is on the money about his own record saying “Well Under Thirty is a tribute to Bob Dylan. If you like Bob Dylan I’m sure you’ll like this album. If you hate Bob Dylan I hope I can at least show you how powerful his songs were and are. I don’t sing like Bob Dylan. Nor do I play the harmonica. It doesn’t matter”.The Psychedelic Gods opened their eyes at the end of the record and blinked beneath a canopy of circus stars they’d made together many milleniums ago. “What was that?” they asked in unison.“Sucks To LaLa Land” said a passing hand-glider maker.“It’s great!” they blew, motioning for the hand-glider maker to press play again.And he duly obliged. Steven Small - The Utica Flower Company