No sooner had I published last Friday's triumphant return of Julian Cope to this blog with a car-themed selection than I visited the Head Heritage website and discovered that he's only gone and dropped a brand new album without fanfare or warning.
Robin Hood is a 15-track, 42 minute album of all-new songs, with no artist credit anywhere on the cover but, from the opening seconds of Julius Geezer, unmistakably the Arch Drude. As ever, the song titles themselves are nearly worth the price of admission alone.
As you can probably gather from the song-to-running-time ratio, this is a collection of pithy, brisk songs mostly in the 2-3 minute range and only one - a five-song medley - stopping just shy of 5 minutes. Whilst not exactly a return to Droolian/Skellington territory, it does see Cope revisiting his particular brand of Ur-Pop, which is very welcome indeed. He's been on a bit of a roll with his last couple of albums and Robin Hood continues his hot streak.
However, the album's been out barely a week, there aren't (and are unlikely to be) any promos posted on YouTube or streaming platforms, so how do you get a taste of what Robin Hood has in store?
Relax. In the time-honoured tradition of those flexi-discs and filler B-sides from the 1970s and 1980s that used to provide an album preview or greatest hits medley, I've slipped on my oven gloves, grabbed my pinking shears and had a go at condensing the entirety of Robin Hood into a breakneck two minutes and fifty-nine seconds.
They said it couldn't be done. And, to be honest, they were dead right. But hopefully this will be reason enough to hop over to Head Heritage and buy the CD yourself. Who knows, if enough copies are sold, there'll be enough in the kitty for a tour...
1) Julius Geezer
2) Four Mohammeds And A Funeral
3) The Devil's Curse
4) Prophet
5) Drunken Skiers Off Piste
6) The Death Of Death
7) Odin In Lindisfarne
8) Don't You Wanna Just Skin Up?
9) Time & A New Understanding
10) Charles The Turd
11) Wrong Side Of The Bed
12) An Oral History Of Blow-Jobs (Medley)
i) An Oral History
ii) You Ain't Rock 'n' Roll If You Need To Be Loved
iii) Aided By Robin Hood's Merry Men, The Very Very Early Fall Manoeuvre Una Baines' Barn-Sized E. Piano Through Sherwood
iv) Me & Bill Gates
v) Julius Geezer (Slight Return)
13) Ballad Of Fat Paul
14) Stop Monkeying With My Heart, You Big Gorilla
15) I Was A Punk Before You Was A Hippie
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