Reviewed by Paul J Zickler
Released: 1980 Cosmic Ray Living Today Phase One Genre: Space Rock Rating: 2.75 out of 5 Highlights: We're All the Same Hungry People Hey, it’s Cosmic Ray! Living Today! Sounds like great advice, and the cover is super trippy. Let’s go. Oops, this sounds nothing like I expected, at least initially. Imagine a Clash cover band playing Secret Agent Man. OK, here come the swooping synths. Helpful for the vibe. Also a longish keyboard solo, less helpful overall, but with some nice moments. The vocalist is closer to NWOBM than Prog, which is also throwing me off. This feels like a concept album where the concept is kinda negated by the actual music. But we’re still only on track one. Wow. Track two goes from Benetar drums to the march of the fire ants to David Byrne to an INXS chorus. I don’t even know what to make of it. I mean, it’s catchy, and seriously, that chorus could be an INXS song (and this is way before they were the INXS we now know). According to the website, Cosmic Ray play Ontario Ukrainian Power music, whatever that means. This song is kinda winning me over. “We’re All The Same.” What does it mean? Is it a good thing or a bad thing? He just keeps repeating it, creating an oddly pleasant, disorienting sensation. [1] A new sensation even. [2] But it won’t end. It will never end. This song will be my entire life. I must accept that. Oh wait, it's over. Whew, OK, on to song three: Let’s Get It Right. Let’s get it funky. The synth seems to be going through a wah wah pedal now. It’s not entirely unlike a Stevie Wonder song, although maybe a better analogy would be early Steve Miller Band. This sound had become extinct in music by 1983, so it’s nice that Cosmic Ray were keepin’ it alive. “The world we live in / Is falling to pieces / This world we live in / Is longing for peace - yeh / So come on people / Let’s get it right.” I dig the optimism, but maybe not the three key changes in the final minute of the track (and a fourth on the fade out!). Hungry People sounds more like what the cover promises. Space rock supreme. Ascending major scale bass line. Pew pew laser sounds and super fast solo from the synth. Insistent drums. “Look at the hungry people” repeated with trippy third eye vocal effects. And it ends in three minutes, which I have to say was a relief. Side two starts with Space in Time: some rock guitar, rock drums, rock piano chords, etc. It’s kind of a hokey sounding chord progression with way more words than previous songs. They needed to move the album along, theme wise, so this is the song with lots of lyrics. Basically the world sucks but you can live your life and find your own space in time etc. Pretty boring tune to be honest, but the guitar solo is decent. We’re down to the final two tracks, where it’s all supposed to come together on the standard concept album. Fire In The Sky is a ballad, much more poppy than the rest of the record, complete with electric piano glissando and an attempted soaring vocal melody. I mean, it doesn’t really soar, partly because the arrangement is sparse and the mix is weird, but also because it’s just not a well written melody. Halfway through we get a martial drumbeat and sirens, and here we go again with the repeated title phrase. “If there’s fire in the sky” pans right and left, leading into an apocalyptic noise break that’s kind of embarrassing. “Is anybody there?” the lead singer howls, as a baby cries. Pink Floyd these guys ain’t. The epic closer is called Living Today. It’s nine minutes long. The verse chords go Am, Am/G#, G, D/F#, F, Ab, Am, E. (3) The chorus goes Dm, E, Am, E. I know this because the song went on for so long that I got kind of bored and decided to pick up my guitar and figure out the chords. I was hoping for an epic solo or two, but it was mostly the lead singer repeating “Living today we’re living in fear, there’s nowhere to live” and then kind of yelling stuff in a whiny voice. There is a guitar soloing, but it’s hard to hear it over the whining. A decidedly non-epic bummer of an ending to the album. 3 stars for ambition, plus .25 for the cover, minus .5 for killing the vibe on the last two tracks. (1) Sort of like drinking a Belgian ale that doesn’t really taste good but makes you feel kind of wobbly without really being intoxicated. You keep thinking, I don’t really like this beer, but you finish it anyway. That feeling. (2) Yes, this is a bad pun / reference to INXS, and when I read it out loud, my wife didn’t even give me a courtesy nod and/or grimace, so I considered leaving it out, but at this point there are like 4 of us even reading these obscure reviews, so I figured what the hell? (3) If you’re not a musician/geek, you wouldn’t know that these are the same basic chords as Chicago’s 25 or 6 to 4, except for the weird A flat thrown in where you’d expect them to go to E. I have to think this is intentional (both the stolen progression and the added weird chord). I could be totally wrong though.
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