Reviews

It is also possibly the worst. Or the best. Or something completely different. It is such a strange thing that even after numerous listens, it is still utterly unfathomable. In fact, trying to describe it is like making a stab at telling a nun what an acid trip looks like.

There are elements of Syd Barrett, Robert Wyatt and Captain Beefheart to the sound, but so freewheeling is White Devils Day… that those bastions of weird might feel their output is, well, a little bit Cliff Richard-y in comparison.

Neil Burrell - White Devils Day Is Almost Over

How odd is it? Well, opener Oompa Zoompa seems to be the tune that Willy Wonka’s diminutive workers would sing if they’d been hooked on demonic rituals, rather than working in that odd factory, before it inexplicably collapses into a frightening bout of speaking in tongues.

It doesn’t often make much more sense than that. Unendingly lo-fi, thanks to a non-existent recording budget, it is an endearing madness of a record that contains a ditty about a fisherman, genuinely shocking key changes and several self-destructing compositions.

And then at the end, just to make sure you really don’t know what to make of him, Neil has stuck a genuinely beautiful paean, Evelyn, which is heartbreaking in its simple lovelorn melody.

So what is White Devils Day Is Almost Over - an over-indulgent pile of noodling twaddle or a flitting collection of genius freak music? The answer is as maddeningly complex and simply mystifying as the album itself.

All that you can be certain of is that it is a debut swaddled in a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, and pushed inside an enigma.