Scarlet's Well - The Dream Spider Of The Laughing Horse

  by Tommy Gunnarsson

published: 12 / 6 / 2004

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Review

I have been a fan of Bid for years now, and mostly because of his work with the brilliant The Monochrome Set. With them, he created some timeless classics, like 'Eine Symponie Des Grauens' and 'Love Goes Down the Drain”, and no record collection is complete without at least one of their albums (for example 'Love Zombies'). Despite this, I have never really understood Scarlet’s Well. On the first two albums, Bid chose to leave the singing to various female vocalists, but you could still hear that Bid was the man behind it all, only by listening to the songs and the lyrics. In The Monochrome Set, he wrote a lot about different persons, but every once in a while he also took another path, the one leading to folklore and myths. With his new band, he decided to follow that path wholeheartedly. This new album, their third, is not that different from the previous ones, but I hear Bid’s voice on a couple of tracks, which is nice. Sadly, this album, however, doesn’t appeal to me that much. The opening title track is one of the few good tracks on the record, and 'Billy Buttock’s Requiem' sounds like it would have been perfect on a Monochrome Set album, with Bid on vocals, of course. I really want to like Scarlett’s Well, but as long as they keep making a couple of good songs per album, I can’t see it happen, I’m afraid.

Track Listing:-

1 The Dream Spider of the Laughing Horse
2 The Curse
3 Billy Buttock's Requiem
4 Blubberhouses
5 Walking with the Beast
6 Endymion Sleeps
7 Plundering the Matriarchal Larder
8 Big Dipper on the Spearman's Floor
9 How the Cypress Made Apollo
10 I Walk in Endless Silence
11 De Natura Deorum