The Steppes - Drop of the Creature (1987) Review by Blair Lucas

Now hold on. Blair from Yellow Matter Custard doing an 80's album review? What the fuck is going on here? Has he sold out? No friends. I have not. I give you Drop of The Creature from 1987 by a band called The Steppes. They were cool enough to release a heavy psych album in the late 80's. Were they commercially successful? Of course not. The biggest hit in 1987 was Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley. Rick Roll'd indeed. But that's not what matters. These guys loved the music from the 1960's so much that they made an album that if released 20 years earlier, would've been considered a lost classic. And it is one. There's heavy, trippy, mind bending rock like the lead off track A Play On Wordsworth, soft, hazy acoustic ballads like the second song Somebody Waits. Even jazz gets thrown in there, recalling some of the darker jazz excursions of The Doors in the third song Holding Up Well. The organ that plays off of the beat is very tasty indeed. I love the muscular bass in Cut In Two, playing along with the military drum beat. Black Forest Friday is of note as it's a short piece, mainly of just harpsichord and weird noises, serving almost as an interlude between the album. The album ends on a epic note with the heavy, harmony, almost church like vocals in More Than This. The guitar lines in between the lines remind me of Alex Lifeson's playing style. A great guitar solo comes to liven things up even more. Now let's get this straight. This album isn't perfect. It falls into the same pitfalls as the music it's emulating at times, but for a band in 1987 to make not only psychedelic music in general, but an album that perfectly captures the 60's sound in arrangements, vocals and production, has to be fully and unequivocally commended. It gives me hope in my quest to perfect the organic 60's sound in my own recordings.

Personal Favorites: A Play on Wordsworth, Somebody Waits, Holding Up Well, Cut in Two, Lazy Ol' Son, More Than This