Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

“Turn on, tune in, and drop out”, the counter culture phrase that was given to Timothy Leary by Canadian intellectual Marshall McLuhan; a phrase that came to be a certain kind of law amongst those ready to accept the notion, of expanding the mind through different means and perhaps the insight to predict the idea of a world wide web, or at least a world-wide consciousness that would have scared the Hell out of those who saw it as alien, as a danger to their own way of life.

Drop Acid and Join A Cult, another way to perhaps look at the situation, and whilst it doesn’t have the same the ring to it, the same endorsement of another way of life, The Screaming Love Collective have put down their moniker with the same care and attention that Timothy Leary uttered his fateful phrase and come out with an 21 track album.

Psychedelia is an avenue that doesn’t get the recognition it deserves in the modern world, the music, the ideas, the art that it produces is beyond what could be imagined in a straight laced world of continuous pop and almost anodyne inoffensiveness; and it one whole heartedly embraced by Bryn Thorburn and Issac Navaro as they take issue with the groove and add uniqueness to their cause and the fire that comes with the stimulus offered.

With special guests that include Ian Moss from Four Candles, Paul Winter from the Mind Sweepers and Julie Ward on the album, what comes across in songs such as We Are Our Own Monsters, The Big Match, Take To The Street, Sub Disco, Artificial Stimulation and Fake Riot, is honesty, a sense of truth that is often closed by our own sense of what the world has to offer, to stay within the confines set by tradition and discouragement. Fight the system at all costs, embrace what cannot be heard and whilst nobody would ever truly suggest you should do what the title of the album suggests, Drop Acid and Join A Cult is perhaps a far more exciting notion in the mind than sitting in a chair all day and being bored to death by dictated, old fashioned rules.

An album that sits comfortably within its genre and explores the edges of other’s confinement perfectly, Drop Acid and Join A Cult is The Screaming Love Collective at their very best.

Ian D. Hall