One Track Mind: Ghost Of A Saber Tooth Tiger, “Long Gone” (2014)
Charlotte Kemp Muhl and Sean Lennon’s Ghost of A Saber Tooth Tiger guested on WNYC’s Spinning On Air last month and played some songs from the newly-released Midnight Sun album, but perhaps revealed more of themselves with the cover they also performed on the show.
The band, which incorporated the members of Invisible Familiars, made a reverb-drenched run at “Long Gone,” Syd Barrett’s acid pop number from The Madcap Laughs. Barrett’s version, as it was with all of his overlooked post-Pink Floyd nugget, is fragile and thin, relying only on an organ and his acoustic guitar, charming in its delicacy but also possessing this dark undercurrent not so obvious on the rest of Madcap. The Ghost of A Saber Tooth Tiger brings the full band to bear on the song, busting out of the tune’s seams with heavy tones from guitars, Muhl’s organ and Tim Kuhl’s discriminating drums as the song descends into the metal bombast waiting at the end the chorus. That’s something that wasn’t envisioned by Barrett but could have easily been the kind of treatment of the band he left behind during its 70s heyday. Lennon’s austere vocal approximates Barrett’s, which keeps this modern-day version tethered to the humble original. The GOASTT’s murky, mystical and sometimes baroque brand of rock did much to bring late-sixties psychedelia to the 21st century, and it’s logical to think that the inspiration for this didn’t need to go any further than Lennon’s immediate family.
Source: Something Else Reviews
