Reviewed by Brendan O'Regan

Listening to this EP I found adjectives coming at me - quirky, genre-busting, inspiring, irritating, unpredictable, amateur, indy. Rocket From Eden hail from Peterborough and categorise their music as "folk, reggae, rock, acoustic," a description which listeners to this album will find accurate enough. They remind me of the old jug bands, and while I might say the music could be more polished, perhaps that's the point. They score best on the lyric front - going where bands rarely go. For example "When You Lied To Her" (on YouTube as "One 'Choice' Two Victims") is a welcome pro-life song, and there aren't too many of those around - the point in this song being that a pro-choice approach doesn't really offer women choices at all, offering lies instead. "One Small Slip" is the only song I can readily recall about biblical events in the Garden of Eden - "one small slip from Adam, one giant fall for all mankind." Calling a song "Caterwauls And Doggerel" is risky, perhaps giving critics a ready vocabulary, but the thrust of the song is that the songwriter offers his humble creative efforts in praise to God. The wry "Broken Cisterns" features the most striking imagery on the collection - God regrets that one of his children has drifted away and settled for the dregs the world has to offer - "You used to drink my life giving waters now you can't even be bothered to dunk." Musical backing is adequate but a bit random, with percussion that is arguably over-emphasised and some fiddle playing that somehow doesn't sit easily with the rest. That being said there's quite a bit of promise here and I'm looking forward to what Rocket From Eden is going to do next.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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