‘Thoughts Of Paradise’ by Sam Jordan & The Dead Buoys (EP)

Sam Jordan & The Dead Buoys: not to be confused with New York punk rockers The Dead Boys

Over four tracks, the Brighton-based songwriter and his band lay down an adventurous template that is packed with warped creativity

After a legal run-in with New York punk rockers The Dead Boys and a slight name change, Dead Boys return as Sam Jordan & The Dead Buoys and bring with them a new EP packed with sonic adventures. Jordan lists Bob Dylan, Alan Lomax, Charles Bukowski and The Doors as influences, throw in a little John Martyn and you begin to get a sense of what they sound like.

A guttural cry announces the arrival of My Nirvana, which is quickly joined by a blur of Wild West guitars. Favourite Messenger is the EP’s most inventive song, morphing from a Jim Morrison-style meditation to a catchy alt-country ditty. I’ve Never Seen Her Fall is restrained and melancholic, a solemn moment of clarity between the hallucinogenic searching which leads on to the closing track, The Stars Are Angels Marooned. It’s a song which wants you to take off your shoes and leap around a fire, driven by swathes of crashing drums.

With Thoughts Of Paradise, Sam Jordan & The Dead Buoys have harnessed their influences and have also managed to conjure up a sound that is hard to pin down but easy to admire.

Verdict: An explosion of inventiveness

Duncan Haskell

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