Raw Honey, the second album from Drugdealer commences with You've Got To Be Kidding, the most impossibly gorgeous piece of instrumental music imaginable. It's an invitation to go back to the early Seventies should you choose to accept it.
Because this is the DNA of this record and this outfit. You've never heard so many quietly crying guitars, plaintive vocals, padding drums, rolling piano and rock solid bass working together with such single minded conviction. On second track Weyes Blood, fresh from her own magnificent Titanic Rising album guests on Honey to drive the point home, and any uncommitted listener will have made up their mind already whether they want to stay aboard for the rest of the ride.
I did so, though the sugar, and honey, are piled on mightily heavily at times. If you chose to, you could surely gorge yourself senseless on watching old episodes of The Brady and Hair Bear Bunch and if you did then Raw Honey would surely be on the record player. Why you might want to is another matter. The end result is sadly somewhat hit and miss.
Every note here, every studio effect, every immaculately arranged burst of longing backing vocals is located utterly between the release dates of Nilsson Schmilsson and Rumours. If that's your dream destination then this might be the record for you but even then you would probably also see at times where the need for Punk was born.
It's not really a patch on Titanic Rising, which takes off from a similar launch pad but manages to produce an overall effect that somehow makes complete sense in 2019. Raw Honey is something of a conceit by comparison, plods much more than it should do given that this is clearly a sincerely meant labour of love and probably won't make you want to dust down your old Wings albums just yet. Or rush out to buy some if you don't have any. I liked quite a bit of it but ultimately felt it doesn't really convince.
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