tracks on LP: Depending On You / My Secret Country / Don’t Feel Bad / Mystic Green / Sad Eyes Kill / Shoot Down The Railroad Man / Fertile Crescent / Invisible People / Gone West / Only Business
Record Label: Island ILPS 9805
Producer: Steve Gronback
Recorded at the Cherokee Studios, Los Angeles, September 1985
Released: 11/85
Purchased: 1985
THE RAIN PARADE Crashing Dream (Island) ‘CRASHING DREAM’ is an unobtrusively mild, lazily satisfying complement to sounds which are categorised clumsily, on both old and new records, as “dreamy psychedelia”.
More in attempted evocation of mood than actual execution of sound, ‘Crashing Dream’, in its own placid way, seems to strike some common chord with the different musical shades and strands heard on songs like The Velvet Underground’s ‘Ocean’, Television’s ‘Days’ and even The Jesus And Mary Chain’s current ‘Just Like Honey’.
Such comparisons seem initially glib but The Rain Parade‘s record is similar to these others, especially on songs like ‘Mystic Green’, ‘Fertile Crescent’, ‘Gone West’ and `Sad Eyes Kill’, because it also tries to reflect some wistful, bitter-sweet feeling.
As the ‘Crashing Dream’ title suggests rather pointedly, The Rain Parade are seemingly caught somewhere between these feelings of “loss and yearning”. As a musical concept, this tenuous balancing of contrasts is obviously hackneyed but it still provides the basis for ’85s two best “psychedelic” pop songs — ‘Just Like Honey’ and The Pastels’ `Baby Honey’. The Rain Parade aren’t as successful — not because they’re less interested in feedback and the word `honey’, but because ‘Crashing Dream’ is most like a studied exercise in both sensitivity and sentiment.
The Rain Parade try to play a sound made up of layers and textures, rather than just hooks and edges, but there is only something vague and partial about ‘Crashing Dream’s “ambience”.
Not unexpectedly, judging from songs called `Mystic Green’ and ‘Fertile Crescent’ and from lines like “flowers do spring from every glade”(?), The Rain Parade often opt for a dewey-eyed ramble through verdant musical and lyrical pastures. During these cloying “mystical” moments, the vocalist is especially anxious to emphasise the tenderness of his “my loins are a smouldering” voice.
But ‘Crashing Dream’ is also a “light blue” reflection of the deeper pleasures uncovered on a Tom Verlaine or a REM record. This is a record full of hints and echoes of other, more cathartic sounds. (UK, music press)
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