Wand, the Californian psychedelic band Cory Hanson fronts, alternate between the twin poles of pounding sludge and gentle pastoralism. His first solo album eschews the former: there’s no sign of Blue Cheer making their presence felt here. In fact, on the wonderful Flu Moon, he sounds like he’s trying to add an extra track to Love’s Forever Changes, with baroque strings and breathless drums combining in something halfway between Alone Again Or and A House Is Not a Motel. “Walking through the memories of someone else entirely,” Hanson sings on Replica, and that feels like an accurate summation of what he’s doing: with the best will in the world, no one is going to be claiming The Unborn Capitalist from Limbo as a work of staggering originality. Its virtues lie in the quality of the songwriting, and the judicious arrangements: strings are used perfectly, to colour and shade rather than overwhelm. All in all, something of a gem.
