Album Review: The Sensible Gray Cells – Get Back Into The World

The trio that make up The Sensible Gray Cells have all been busy in their own right, both Captain Sensible and Paul Gray have been active with The Damned, including the release of their new EP “The Rockfield Files“, with Gray also releasing “Séance” with Professor And The Madman, who included The Damned’s freshly reunited drummer Rat Scabies amongst their number. The final part of the puzzle is Johnny Moped drummer Marty Love who released “Lurrigate Your Mind” earlier this year, so the upcoming release of “Get Back Into The World” means that 2020 has been a productive year, with the trio issuing a quartette of psyche influenced releases between them. It’s been seven years since The Sensible Gray Cells released their debut album “A Postcard From Britain“, an album rooted in British psychedelia, and their latest album, like it’s predecessor, provides a unique snapshot of modern life.

The reformation of the trio was as product of the members various projects being off the road, the album is a product of the listless feeling that has seen people channelling the unexpected and unfamiliar amounts of spare time into their passion. In the case of “Get Back Into The World” that is the soundtrack that inspired the first wave of punk bands, but whilst their latest release still embraces the psyche pop of the UK, there is also an influence from the fuzzier territory that the US psyche and garage bands occupied. The opening track ‘Sell Her Speak‘ recalls The Damned‘s ‘So, Who’s Paranoid‘ era with a hit of breezy psyche punk, but this is not an exercise in recycling, the members roots are offset against moments of jaunty psychedelia and hits of fuzzy garage. Given that The Sensible Gray Cells contain half of the current line up of The Damned there is an obvious appeal for the their fan base. The trio have admitted that a number of the songs were originally written for that band, but this is not a case of upcycling discarded remnants, these just weren’t quite the right fit.

At times “Get Back Into The World” offers heady self indulgent psyche epics, at others their punk fangs are exposed, with the majority of the album flirting between these two worlds, lyrically their is some biting social commentary, with the scathing “What’s The Point Of Andrew?” being a prime example, as well as indulging a love of campy horror movies and pretty much everything in-between. The Sensible Gray Cells have produced an album borne of the frustration of lockdown, something that has seen them channel the social isolation into an album that is a love letter to the member’s dusty record collections, maybe proving that there is a positive side to lockdown. But this is not in anyway a replacement for what we’ve lost, as Captain Sensible himself states in the press release “CAN WE HAVE LIVE MUSIC BACK AGAIN PLEASE!”.

You can pre-order “Get Back Into The World” via Damaged Goods Records here