Lost:Time is the fourth album from Crooked Mouth and delivers their most energetic set to date.
Written, arranged and recorded - off and on - since 2017, Lost:Time builds on the driving instrumentals and soaring vocals of previous releases and presents a message to our younger selves, a meditation on the things we didn't know we didn't know.
Tracks
Lost:Time (4:05)
DragonflyEye (8:50)
Astronaut (9:24)
Second Star (5:13)
Angels Once (6:30)
Shadows of our Good Intentions (6:51)
This Time (The Astronatut's Promise) (3:32)
Release date
Streaming: April 5 2024
CD: May 1 2024
Making the Dragon Fly
The story of Lost:Time
'This is me, reaching down on through the years to tell you how it all went down...'
It's almost 9 years since the last album, One Bright Midnight, and it's difficult to point to just one reason for that lost time (if you'll pardon the pun). It would be too easy to highlight the impact of a global pandemic - a two year halt to almost any progress at all - while ignoring a variety of other real-world factors -the demands of family life, the 9-to-5, the ease with which I get distracted by a good book or a nice bottle of wine.
Somehow, over all that time, most of my co-conspirators still found ways to come together and move air: Tony, Ali, Lynne, Mike, Eilidh and Leen all stepped up to add their parts to the Crooked Mouth story - one that is now over 20 years old.
We've all changed, of course. The names are the same but the arrangements and note choices are not those we would have made back in 2003. One thing that hasn't changed, however, is the excitment of a song coming together - the moment a riff comes to life when Tony & Leen or Mike hit the groove, or Eilidh and Lynne find that ghostly harmony.
Randall Thomas
'Just look around son, you might just find a better way...'
And with the passing of time comes another new dynamic: my son James, now one third of instrumetalist proggers Rivyrs, stepped in to add some youthful pizzazz to DragonflyEye and Astronaut.
(You can tell this has been written by an oldie by the use of 'pizzazz' in a non-ironic sentence.)
James Pulli
'Feel the rush that comes with every beat...'
And so the songs evolved. Some ideas took hold while others were explored and discarded. Before long the lyrical themes of the passage of time and lessons learned began to emerge.
Meanwhile, in the real world, tastes were moving. In a strange backshift to earlier times, the record buying public had rediscovered the beauty of vinyl LPs and it was an easy choice to follow suit and give the album a vinyl-friendly run time (another subtle glance in the rear-view mirror).
Lynne Campbell
Eilidh Maclean
'There are no supermen, only us...'
Anchoring the narrative is the 'Astronaut', a metaphor for looking back and moving forward and also for grand plans gone wrong.
The found sounds from Apollo 17 - Nasa's last manned mission to the moon (so far) - gave us real voices from the past (in this case, 1973), a time when astronauts provide the template for modern day heroes, real-life supermen pointing the way to a bright future. Of course, that's not how it turned out but it was a nice dream while it lasted.
Ali Mitchell
Tony Hodge
'So, here we are...'
When a project takes time and people are scattered and circumstances push the timeline again and again, it helps to have a rallying point, somewhere to bring all the parts together. Our rallying point was The Depot Studio where we experimented, recorded, mixed and mastered and where our engineer/producer/amp guru Craig Ross put up with seemingly endless delays and rethinks. Thanks Craig!
But over such a long time it was perhaps inevitable that not everyone could be part of this latest chapter. Family commitments meant that Kenny Haig, our front man and friend over the first 3 albums, couldn't make this set.
Stepping in and putting his stamp on the CM sound is LA-based vocalist Randall Thomas.
James Campbell
James is only one of several guests on these recordings, each of whom brings their own signature sound to Lost:Time:
James Pulli (Metal Hall of Fame inductee with Impellitteri) delivered pounding bass on Shadows of our Good Intentions;
Larry Saltzman played all manner of percussion on Second Star;
Miriam Speyer gave us vocal layerings on Shadows of our Good Intentions
and Richard John Curran performed strings on Lost:Time.
The concept of looking back to understand our way forward emerged in the lyrics and the music: vintage keyboard tones, '80's-style twin guitar harmonies and even hair metal yells are pointers to the past, leaving no doubt as to the album's pedigree.
But nostalgia is a cul-de-sac and nods to the past needed to be balanced out with more modern elements. Electronics and found sounds featured in previous Crooked Mouth releases (both Hold in the Sun and One Bright Midnight) and they once again play a part here, along with modern metal vocal stylings and the enigmatic 'Space Goats'.
Mike McCann
Leen
And it was to NASA that we looked for the inspiration for the album art.
Here's our astronaut braving a desolate, primitive environment. Anyone familiar with the science fiction movies of the 1960s or '70s will perhaps see the call back to the opening sequence of Planet of the Apes as Charlton Heston and his companions battle their way across a desert landscape, lost yet still heroic.
It's fair to say that each Crooked Mouth release has been subtly different from the last and the same can be said for Lost:Time. Those differences reflect the interests, influences and evolving tastes of the contributors, old and new. And so, to close, let me set your expectations by borrowing from the closing track: this time won't be the same - I promise.
Ken Campbell, March 2024