CRAYOLA LECTERN - Disasternoon

Before listening to the new album by Crayola Lectern, it's worth taking a step back. I don't want to retrace his recording career, but simply dwell on the track "Gaslighter's Blues", a splendid murder ballad laid over heavy piano notes and a surreal interplay of sax and trumpet, made raw and biting by the sound of a guitar and the voice of Chris Anderson: four minutes of poignant poetry that, disappointingly, is nowhere to be found, as promised, on the English musician's third record "Disasternoon" — though its absence only confirms the artist's remarkable stature.

Luckily there's much more to talk about when it comes to Crayola Lectern's latest album: the English musician's creations are chameleonic, elusive, bizarre. In just two albums, Anderson has distilled the primordial psychedelia made in the UK, the Canterbury sound, the minimalism of Terry Riley, 1920s jazz and the sensibility of Robert Wyatt, with results so exhilarating that they render any critical comparison moot.

The first seed of "Disasternoon" scattered to the airwaves was the title track: a fabric of folk melodies steeped in psychedelia and post-glam decadence, a musical postcard best enjoyed over tea with Brian Wilson and Paul McCartney, while the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band stumbles into sweet, deliciously demodé notes of British jazz.

Within this dreamlike, late-period psych-prog fresco, room is found for the brief but striking piano-and-keyboard flourish of "Stars Over Louth", over which Al Strachan's trumpet rises triumphant. It's an instrumental track, simple yet evocative, born out of a pleasant correspondence with Robert Wyatt's partner, Alfreda Benge. In its first draft, untitled, the piece reportedly won high praise from the former Soft Machine man himself. But the connection to Alfreda and Robert isn't confined to the title alone: Louth is in fact the town where the two artists live, and the album cover was drawn by Alfreda herself, who has also designed covers for Wyatt's records.

"Disasternoon" is an album best enjoyed like a dreamlike rock opera, a sequence of compositions with a fairy-tale, pleasantly nostalgic atmosphere, framed by two tracks that act as opening and closing credits: first "Sad Cornetto", which introduces the various instruments (including, naturally, a cornet), leaving them free to stir up disorder within the classically-tinged, crystalline harmonic sequence; then the final track, "Coscoroba", which revisits the theme with a more mournful, sorrowful body of sound, before a drum roll, reminiscent of a band of tin soldiers, opens the way to a progressive-rock jam that seems to emerge from a parallel world where the souls of English rock's rosiest era have found refuge.

"Disasternoon" is an album born during the pandemic, with minimal technological support — a rudimentary Logic Pro X, a piano, a Casiotone, a small Korg, a Casio CZ1000 and a Logic Mellotron — but don't bother hunting for imperfections: the elusive, cosmic charm of "The Sky Over The Sea" thrives on exactly those wayward splinters that other purists would scrape away without hesitation.

Never inclined toward a fleeting approach, Crayola Lectern's music doesn't shy away from moments of naïve bliss, and that's exactly what happens in the splendid Beach Boys-style melody of "Dissolve". "Disasternoon" is a concentrate of erudite musical arrangements and sparing, well-chosen words, a project that follows in the footsteps of artists like Pink Floyd, Caravan, Soft Machine, Beatles and, why not, David Bowie, without ever losing its own originality — staking its claim as one of the finest albums of the year so far.

One final well-deserved round of applause for the band backing Chris Anderson – Alistair Strachan (trumpet, cornet, glockenspiel), Damo Waters (drums and percussion), Bic Hayes (electric guitar), Maria Marzaioli (violin) – and a mention also goes to three members of Cardiacs (Jon Poole, Bob Leith and Bic Hayes), who join him on stage.

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14/08/2025