by Stewart Mason

Over the course of 25 years and seemingly twice that many albums, it’s become well nigh impossible to state simply what the Legendary Pink Dots “sound like.” The best one can hope to do is to describe what Edward Ka-Spel and company are up to on any given album. Happily, Your Children Placate You from Premature Graves is one of the band’s most straightforward (relatively speaking) albums, and one of its best. The overall tone is one of English psychedelic whimsy mutated into darker, largely electronic forms: think of classic-era Gong and Syd Barrett‘s solo albums, as remixed by Aphex Twin. Ka-Spel‘s vocals have the high-pitched, childlike delivery of Barrett or the Television Personalities‘ Dan Treacy, which adds an extra layer of nervous dread to the uniformly dark, foreboding lyrics. Musically, the combination of the Silverman‘s whirring electronic drones and the warmer, more human sound of Niels Van Hoorn‘s saxophone parts sets up a Krautrock-like organic/inorganic tension that permeates the entire album even on songs like the delicate, acoustic-guitar-led “The Island of Our Dreams” that lean more to one end of the spectrum than the other. Interestingly, this Meddle-like respite, the sound-effects-plus-found-voice opener “Count on Me,” and the cut-up piano and drones of the closing “Your Number Is Up” all smack hard of classic Pink Floyd, perhaps the first time that the Legendary Pink Dots have recalled another band for more than a few minutes at a time. A quarter century into their career, such a comparatively accessible album is perhaps the most surprising thing they could have done.

Stewart Mason, All Music Guide

(Date of review unknown)

Artist: The Legendary Pink Dots

Album: Your Children Placate You From Premature Graves

Label: ROIR

Year of Release: 2006

ME Rating: 4 out of 5

Reviewed by: Mike Wood

Date Reviewed: 2006-10-08

For over 25 years now, the Dots have been consistently delivering on their own personal brand of electronic punk. This new release shows them in superior form, and features some of their best work of the last decade. Yet The Silverman, Ka-Spel, and the rest add to their legend with Your Children, easily their best in a decade, or at least since 2002’s release. As usual, they deliver disturbing lyrical probes into the psyche, and back up their wisdom with music that often borders on the psychedelic, the violent, the ambient, but always strays from each at odd moments, keeping the ear guessing. Songs like “No Matter What You Do” and “Please Don’t Get Me Wrong” straddle the line between mercy and revenge, while “The Made Man’s Manifesto” and “Your Number is Up” work by taking a more defiant lyrical stand. Legendary Pink Dots have never been afraid of exploring any dark recess of the mind or of sound. To their credit they have also never lost the curiosity that has kept them making vital music all the way through to the present. For those listening, the reward is true art, that makes you think, sway, and question just how solid an allegiance you ought to have with your own inner delusions.

Legendary Pink Dots

Your Children Placate You from Premature Graves

ROIR

Posted: Sunday, October 08, 2006

By: Matthew Johnson

Assistant Editor

A renewed emphasis on guitars results in one of the Legendary Pink Dots’ most subtly beautiful albums in years.

The Legendary Pink Dots’ approach to music can be a little overwhelming, especially if you’re not prepared for it. With everything from clanking industrial sounds to dissonant wailing horns, the Dots touch on a myriad of musical forms, from free jazz to psychedelia, industrial noise to ambient and progressive rock, without actually being part of any of them, and the sheer mass of their musical output borders on bewildering. The band’s latest full-length album, however, is a surprisingly tranquil outing for the Dots, more a somber meditation than a chaotic freak-out. It features some of the band’s most traditional arrangements; the electronics are still present, of course, but as often as not they hover quietly in the background, letting acoustic guitar progressions carry the musical weight. “The Island of Our Dreams,” in particular, is soft and intimate, with strummed chords adorned only by watery pianos and the occasional sampled chime, while “Feathers at Dawn” incorporates a theremin-like keyboard effect and bits of bouncing brass to give the folk-inspired strums a touch of the Dots’ signature carnival atmosphere. Singer Edward Ka-Spel is in fine form here, starting off with the child-like but menacing sing-song of “No Matter What You Do” and punning cleverly on the current Iraq conflict on “Please Don’t Get Me Wrong,” a beautifully eclectic masterpiece that starts off as a sort of industrialized dub track before meandering into creepy yet mournful Middle Eastern territory. For fans of the band’s more psychedelic elements, “The Made Man’s Manifesto” is a classic jam, with guitars wailing over a hypnotically building synth pulse, while “Peace of Mind” is stonily soporific, with Ka-Spel chanting rhythmically over slow, metallic percussion and Niels van Hoorn’s dreamy saxophones. While keeping all of the experimental elements intact and incorporating some of the Dots’ most intelligent songwriting, Your Children Placate You from Premature Graves is perhaps the band’s best release since 2002’s brilliant All the King’s Horses, if not even before.

Legendary Pink Dots, The: Your Children Placate You from Premature Graves

On Four Way Street, Neil Young describes one of his songs as starting out slow and then just fizzling away. After about the 4th time through, I can not think of a better description of Your Children Placate You from Premature Graves. “No Matter What You Do” is a chant based song with un-countable noises and instruments to make a powerful rant. But then “Stigmata #4” has a heavy reliance on piano, and this starts the long drones where the CD kind of fizzles out.

Edward Ka-Spel does his best Syd Barrett imitation throughout and the dark ideas and statements will bring down even the happiest person. “Please Don’t Get Me Wrong” and “The Made Man’s Manifesto” both have a We Might Be Giants feel to them, but only if The Giants had just watched A Clockwork Orange. “The Island Of Our Dreams” is the most accessible song but still is far from contemporary.

Your Children Placate You from Premature Graves is Art in the media of music. From the beats and electronic drones, the dark lyrics, and the nervous energy throughout, this album is meant to be a portrait, to be admired, discussed, and analyzed. This is not the type of album you put on for background music.

Track Listing

• Count on Me 1:45
• No Matter What You Do 6:55
• Stigmata, Pt. 4 6:55
• Feathers at Dawn 5:12
• Please Don’t Get Me Wrong 6:36
• Peace of Mind 5:27
• The Island of Our Dreams 5:14
• Bad Hair 7:52
• The Made Man’s Manifesto 7:46
• A Silver Thread 6:44
• Your Number 2:44

Added: September 8th 2006
Reviewer: Steve Ambrosius
Score: ****

Legendary Pink Dots – Your Children Placate You From Premature Graves
Released on Roir, 5/30/06
By Rossiter Drake (Jun 16, 2006)

Celebrating their 25th anniversary with a new album and coinciding tour, Legendary Pink Dots founders Edward Ka-Spel and Phil “The Silverman” Knight have made no secret of their desire to make the occasion a memorable one. “The actual theme of ‘legacy’, the consequence of past and present action on the future, has consciously informed much of this release,” Knight says. “In some ways, it’s been a central-core theme of all our songwriting these last 25 years.” Right. The good news for Knight and the Dots faithful is that Your Children Placate You From Premature Graves is a return to mystifying form for the aging outfit, an abstract jumble of orchestral flourishes, melancholy piano riffs, drugged-out psychedelia and industrial gloom.

Is it compelling? Oddly, yes. The Dots are anything but focused, and most tracks on Premature Graves meander along without any discernible direction, taking countless detours into sonic chaos and formless jamming. “The Island of Our Dreams”, a haunting, delicate ballad that could pass for Animals-era Pink Floyd, is tightly constructed and readily accessible before dissolving, ever so arbitrarily, into dissonant noise. Elsewhere, Ka-Spel and Knight serve up straightforward slices of whimsical pop (“Feathers At Dawn”), quasi-religious chants (“No Matter What You Do”) and droning, synth-heavy tales of Middle Eastern violence (“Please Don’t Get Me Wrong”).

If Premature Graves isn’t particularly uplifting — and with a title like that, who’d have guessed? — it is an oddball beauty, lovingly pieced together by madcap scientists who aren’t afraid to have a few experiments blow up in their faces. Here, they design a series of luscious soundscapes so vast that they sometimes get lost. No matter. For the Legendary Pink Dots and their cult-like legion of fans, getting lost is an essential part of the trip.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

The Legendary Pink Dots “Your Children Placate You From Premature Graves” (ROIR)
By Trey Perkins
Friday. Jun 09, 5:21 PM

Fucking bizarre beyond description (in a good way).

I thought I knew about weird music. I thought listening to Frank Zappa And The Mothers Of Invention was enough. I thought enduring the entirety of Pink Floyd’s “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving With a Pict” would allow me to say that I had a “handle” on strange music. Well, I was wrong, entirely too wrong. Why? Because one day I woke up and checked my mail, and as it turned out I was supposed to review a band that is equally as macabre and bizarre, if not even moreso: The Legendary Pink Dots. Although I’ve mentioned Zappa and Floyd, it’s not a fair comparison. The Dots are not as whimsical as Zappa, even when Frank is steeped in his most cynical of moods. And to compare the Dots to Floyd wouldn’t be accurate, either. The Legendary Pink Dots are closest to the Syd Barret era of Pink Floyd: dark, brooding, moody, and officially scary. Yet these are only comparisons that don’t do the band any justice. The only reason for mentioning Floyd is quite possibly to come to the realization that the Dots are in a class by themselves. To be more frank, The Legendary Pink Dots sound like nothing I’ve ever heard: it’s weird, and it’s just about as freaky as finding a Latin-speaking baby in a trash can. Scratch that. With an album entitled Your Children Placate You From Premature Graves, it’s way more sinister than that.

Like Barret-era Floyd, the music has a whimsical pretense that actually conveys darker motives and intents. From the beginning of “Count on Me,” a piano riff cues up and sounds like a scene in a horror movie. Two people wandering through an abandoned house find an infantile music box that plays a theme. The theme is only haunting because it’s juxtaposed against dark surroundings. With a title like “Count on Me,” one would it expect it to be a love song of some generic type, but again, we hear a haunting piano riff that’s made even more creepy because of a dense and hollow sounding echo surrounding it. Edward Ka-Spel, the band’s vocalist, mumbles through lines with a monotone British accent. “Bad Hair” is a great example of this, and it’s actually a pretty good song.

I haven’t really listened to The Legendary Pink Dots’ music in the past, so I had no idea what to expect. With a name like theirs, I had some idea that it would be off the wall, emotionally overwrought music, and I began to wonder if this weirdness and cryptic attitude is a front. I mean, what makes them so legendary? The music speaks for itself and lyrics like “stuffing myself with sedatives” leave no room for questions. This is a band that’s a real oddity. Not only are the Dots incredibly obscure, but they’re also damn proud of their relative cryptic nature. They take pleasure in maintaining this “under the radar” status. It’s allowed them success as a best kept secret, and they’re damned good at what they do. In this way, questions about how good of an album is Your Children Placate You From Premature Graves are moot. The band’s intent is to continue exploring the odd, the bizarre, and the marginal, and they succeed. I felt as about uncomfortable listening to the album as I did listening to the death knell of kittens (not that I do that on my own free time…). Most likely, if you considered Salad Fingers to be orgasmic, you might get your rocks off by picking up Your Children Placate You From Premature Graves.

(The year of this review was not specified on the site.)