top of page

Sounds...

For their first album release of 2016 the wunnerful folks at Mega Dodo have picked a blinder of a record from The Honey Pot, the Devon based melting pot of very English sweet, surreal and strange psychedelic sounds and groovy 60s tripped out San Francisco Acid Rock.
Inside The Whale shows that The Honey Pot have significantly progressed since the release of their 2013 debut album. Where To The Edge Of The World was very “English” sounding, name-checking a rich history full of the likes of The Hollies, The Kinks, Donovan amongst others, the new record has an harder San Francisco circa 1967 vibe while still retaining that core of quintessential, whimsical Englishness. The albums opener ‘The Outskirts Of Your Mind’ has the spiraling Folk Rock feel of very early Fairport Convention, if they had dabbled in anything more mind expanding than Real Ale, with Male/Female voices blending beautifully. The track is a good example of where The Honey Pot are now at and you can imagine that this folky, Acid Rock sound could have been the direction that the Fairport’s could have taken if they had not been given the address of Cecil Sharp House. The more surreal, high in Notting Hill Gate, 60s/70s counterculture vibe can be heard on ‘Psychedelic Circles’, a trippy Donovanesque “acid hymn” that in a very strange parallel universe has been a massive worldwide hit and kept ‘Please Release Me’ off the top of the charts in April 1967. Part of The Honey Pot’s evolving sound is that they are prepared to improvise more and see where it takes them…………the album’s title track is a blissed out eight minutes of beautiful, gentle psychedelia which ebbs and flows around Crystal Jacqueline’s wonderful voice. There is a more expansive use of keyboards on this record which gives the songs more depth and colour………….this works really well on tunes like ‘Walking On Eggshells’, which has a baroque feel somewhere between H.P. Lovecraft and Jacco Gardner, and where acidic guitar lines, rolling bass and Doorsy organ combine to propel the Psychedelic Blues monster ‘Pink and Orange’ screaming straight outta the Matrix Club sometime in 67. Although Inside The Whale has been inspired by great 60s West Coast bands such as Jefferson Airplane, The Peanut Butter Conspiracy, The Doors, It’s A Beautiful Day, The Sopwith Camel, Spirit and Love along with psychedelicized Brits like Donovan, Kevin Ayers, Kaleidoscope, Traffic and other bands that found heaven in their minds, it is not a "paint by numbers" recreation of the past. The final two tracks ‘Butterfly Ride’ and ‘A Curates Egg’ are both excellent pieces of modern swirling psychedelia that although evokes a sense of bygone days are, like the rest of the album, looking into the eternal now where anything is possible and the future is unwritten. The Honey Pot are taking the “Sound Of The Sixties”, retooling it so that is relevant today and in the process have made a really great psychedelic record that has now set the bar pretty high for the rest of the year.
Also worth checking out is The Honey Pot’s contribution to the Mega Dodo Singles Club……..for the first release a couple of fantastic tracks left over from the Inside The Whale sessions (‘Lisa Dreams’ and ‘Into The Deep’) have been selected. ‘Lisa Dreams’ is perfect Californian Sunshine Pop, an imaginary soundtrack to a groovy beach party.....a beach blanket bongout that the Shaggs are playing at. As an antidote to the dark, damp British winter months we can’t think of anything better. The flip side is a slow burning, darker, more menacing acid fried Psych number underpinned by rumbling bass and groovy drums. Imagine the Doors at their lysergic, swampiest, slinkiest best…….it’s a total trip. Released on 22/01/16 ‘Lisa Dreams’ is available as a 7” single with limited edition run of 250 copies with a digital download also available.
The Psychedelicatessen


 

Inside The Whale Album

Liza Dreams

Singles

To The Edge Of The World

Eletctronic Memory

Crystal Jacqueline and

The Honey Pot

Megadodo Records

Hailing from the West Country, The Honey Pot were brought to Rocksucker's attention by Mordecai Smyth and they share a predilection for vintage English psychedelia. Contrary to Smyth's bouncily melodic and lightly surrealist character portraits, however, these guys deal in more of a "Tell me, tell me / What is it you see?" sort of mysticism, evidenced by the fact that that is indeed a lyric from the album (the gleefully silly "Comfys Honey Jar", to be precise).

 

The Honey Pot pull it off with aplomb, but doomy closer "Sweet Orange Sunshine" hints at the presence of another trick or two up their collective sleeve that they will hopefully indulge next time round rather than spend so much time anchored in homage. Still, psych-heads should find plenty to enjoy here...ROCKSUCKER

The Honey Pot are purveyors of psych pop that is a bit folky, a touch groovy and thoroughly English (spare a tuppence for some butterscotch ice cream and curried spam?). Full of ‘black penny grooves’ sprinkled with a dusting of whimsy, The Honey Pot nimbly keep their tunes from becoming treacly, or worse yet, twee. Name-checking a rich history full of the likes of The Hollies, The Kinks, Donovan…you know the candy jar we’re talking about…To The Edge Of The World offers up as diverse a box of goods as you’d expect with that lineage. Vocal duties, split between the sexes, work to serve the songs’ best interests whether it’s more pastoral oriented fare or more outright hazy psych provisions. Though firmly rooted in that era above, The Honey Pot still keep the sound current…and currant. Opting for a lighter, frosted touch that keeps the melody up front rather than drenched in fatty sonics, To The Edge Of The World should please the sweet tooth, as well as leave a little something sticking to the ribs.....SUNRISE OCEAN BENDER

Back to Crystal Jacqueline and the Honey Pot who appear to share centre stage on this dandified double disc selection – yes you read right – a twin coloured seven inch jamboree replete in gatefold sleeving all accompanied by an eight page story booklet cobbled together by FdM founding father Andy Bracken with artwork penned by Dale Simpson. And that’s just the packaging for inside be prepared to be arrested by a seven track dream coat clocking in at 28 minutes of woozy enchantment. Here you’ll stumble upon the wired and fracturing pop psychosis of ‘white rabbit’ as it veers from flights of fantasy to smoked out mind lost hysteria whilst Floyd’s ‘remember a day’ is completely rewired and rendered as their own arriving clipped and decoded in a sumptuous supernatural aura that oozes freak prog folk magicalia and mysticism. Talking of re-branding and putting a new spin on hardy weather worn classics of yore their rephrasing of Mighty Baby’s ’Egyptian tomb’ has to be heard to be truly appreciated, applied with a fulsome tripadelic tapestry thrown into the honey pot tumble dryer this beauty emerges from the hot wash spruced with a wasted and kookified jiggy wiggy effervescence that’s trippily tangy and totally tuned out in a wig flipping way. Throw in a mind altering freak beat take of Fleur de Lys ‘tick tock’ in truth sounding as though its been time tripped from the late 60’s

The Sunday Experience

 

Crystal Jacqueline and

The Honey Pot

Double Vinyl EP

Fruits de Mer Records

It’s a tricky one, this.  Seven days ago, staring at these three new releases, it would have been easy to rank them among the year’s finest, and heap praise upon the genius souls who decreed the dog days of the dying December were a suitable season for a musical climax.  Like all of 2014 was building up to this!!!!Finally, Electronic Memory is a gloriously packaged CD release for what has already become one of last year’s most in-demand vinyl packages, the double EP from Crystal Jacqueline and the Honey Pot which so highlighted Fruits de Mer’s 2014 output.  This time, it arrives as (deep breath) a limited edition of 100 boxed sets, each stuffed with includes a CD, a 12 page booklet, two postcards, a badge.....It’s a deceptive opener, too, bright and breezy and so utterly devoid of menace that no way do you expect the Airplane’s albino hoppity to sweep in like an understated storm cloud, the tempo upped, the guitar howling, and Jacqueline almost threatening the lyric that Grace Slick left echoing through an emotionless void.Later, Traffic’s “Hole In My Shoe” comes in for an almost punk-infused mangling… if the implied yowls and riffery were supplanted by skeletons and roundabouts.  Brilliantly supplanted.  Traffic have never moved so sexily.
And if that was the end of the package’s merits, we’d already be celebrating wildly.  But wait, there’s more – a half dozen visits from the Storyteller.  Who, appropriately, tells stories in between the songs, to lend the proceedings such an air of lucid Carrollian menace that you only wish there’d been even more. It’s wonderful.
Goldmine Magazine
 

Liza Dreams - The Honey Pot
00:00 / 00:00
bottom of page