Spirits Burning is a sort of spacey progressive rock collective fronted by Don Falcone joined by an ensemble cast of collaborators.
Here with the End of All Songs Part 1, Don’s continuing work with science fiction writer Michael Moorcock continues with the musical interpretation of Moorcock’s classic The Dancers at the End of Time trilogy comprising of An Alien Heat, The Hollow Lands and now The End of All Songs.
I read the trilogy as a mere young lad around 1980 or thereabouts and have the An Alien Heat and The Hollow Lands albums – then Don emailed a few days ago about The End of All Songs so I ordered a copy pronto as it passed me by on release at the back end of last year….
As with the first two interpretations, this third covering the third part of the trilogy is another excellent exercise in laid back (ish) trippy, spacey, atmospheric progressive rock.
We have lyrics following the story, rambling, meandering guitars, interesting percussion, melodic bass lines and other varied instrumentation giving quite an engaging listen especially I’d say if you’ve read the books. Though enjoyable stuff even if you haven’t read them.
Moorcock of course has worked with Hawkwind at various times over the years so if you’re familiar with that, you’ll get what’s going on with his work with Don and Spirits Burning.
The list of contributors is indeed impressive again – various members past and present from Blue Oyster Cult, Hawkwind such as Donald Roser, Albert Bouchard, Danny Miranda, Harvey Bainbridge, Alan Davey, and many, many others.
The great Fabienne Shine (Shakin’ Street) provides the vocals on It is Everything, which is one of the highlights of the album.
Donald Roeser’s guitar contributions are instantly recognisable as is Albert Bouchard’s drumming when both appear.
The entire album draws the listener in to the story giving plenty to get in to. Overall if you think a slightly laid back combo of Blue Oyster Cult, Hawkwind, Gong and similar you’d be about right.
Check out Try and Try Again for example:
The first two albums in the trilogy are both worthy too, so do have a look at them.
Various versions from the Spirits Burning Bandcamp page:
https://spiritsburningmichaelmoorcock.bandcamp.com/album/the-end-of-all-songs-part-1
A quick note on that – postage to the UK (and perhaps other places outside the US) was rather expensive. I bagged mine from Amazon which was more reasonable. Link here: https://amzn.to/3UsjkII
The new live album from the good old Tygers of Pan Tang – Live Blood – is out. Review of that shortly. It is rather jolly good.
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