A review of Joe Meek's "I Hear A New World"

Hoo boy.
I saved the fucking out-of-this-solar-system weirdest for last.

So, a while back, They Might Be Giants had a service called the TMBG Clock Radio, which would stream music (mainly by TMBG but, occasionally, by someone that TMBG dug) and, one such song was "I Hear A New World" by Joe Meek and the Blue Men. It was trippy and reverby and spacey and overly 60's sounding; sci-fi surf rock. Jump forward about a decade to Rough Trade East, where Christina decides to grab some weird albums that she's never heard of, one of which...is this album. Jump forward a month or two to when I finally get around to listening to it.
And, finally, jump forward a few weeks to right this very instant, as I sit, typing this review.
Good.
Let's go!

Rather than break down each song and go on, at length, listing what I did or didn't like about it, I'm going to approach this differently, as the album itself is different from most anything I have ever heard.*
What follows is Joe Meek's musical formula, utilized on each of the twelve tracks that constitute this album.
I discovered this formula after about...oh...two songs.

First, between 20 and 45 seconds of blippy, swooshing space noise.**
Next, (if the song features vocals) chipmunk the hell out of said vocals, throw in some Monty Python sound effects and then soak everything in reverb.
Then, add more reverb.
Finally, give the track a 50's pulp sc-fi title following a strict "(blank) Of The (blank)" format such as "Valley of The Saroos", "March of the Dribcots", "Disc Dance of the Globbots" or "Love Dance Of The Saroos".
Or, you know, something along those lines.***

Congratulations! You have made a Joe Meek album!

WAIT! STOP! Before you chuckle bitterly at my scathing wit, I want to make one thing very clear: I enjoyed the hell out of this album. It was a total gas. Was I annoyed at times? Sure, but not nearly as much as I was pickled tink.

Some notes on specific songs:
Track 2 ("Globb Waterfall"): Is the bridge from "Apache".
Track 9 ("Love Dance Of The Saroos"): Ooooo! Moody!
Track 11 ("Disc Dance of the Globbots"): Is one note off from "Polly Wolly Doodle".

And there you have it.
I cannot stress enough how much I think everyone should experience this album.
A lot.****





* "Different", not "better", not "worse", "different".

** On this album, there is one (1) track longer than three minutes and fourteen seconds...and it is three minutes and fifteen seconds.

*** If you'd like, feel free to add more reverb at this time.

**** But first, find the "Reverb" knob on your set up and crank it to 11.