"If you're going to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair" (Scott McKenzie)
Mermaid Skeletons may or may not have been to San Francisco but they have certainly taken the exhortation about flowers to heart, both musically and literally. The photograph in the insert to their Darlings EP shows them all looking for all the world as if they have just teleported back to 1960s flower-power heaven.
The music is what you'd expect having seen such a photograph: it too harks back to those hippy, peace-loving days. Strummed acoustic guitars, gentle vocals and beautiful harmonies with only the slightest scent of anything progressive coming virtue of their choice of some slightly (but only very slightly!) unusual instruments. I am perhaps stretching a point here because this is a progressive music site: I might be nearer the mark if I said this was simple acoustic pop music.
The band themselves claim to have taken their inspiration from the music of the "Silly Symphonies" series of Disney cartoons from the 1930s and to have wanted to recreate the "feel" of the Bambi film on CD.
It is soft, it is gentle, it is pretty but it lacks that tiny bit of danger and adventure that even Bambi has. Hopefully the band will chance their arm a bit more if they come to record a full length album. There's enough on Darlings to suggest that it might be a worthwhile venture provided they leave the flowers in the field.
Track Listing:-
1) Happy Bell (4:25)
2) An Affair With Education (4:39)
3) Palm Coast (3:48)
4) The Darlings (2:15)
5) Shelton's Education (0:45)
6) In Search of the Pan Child (4:14)
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