Pukka Orchestra - Chaos is Come Again

The Pukka Orchestra is one of those little footnotes in Canadian music that generally references "Listen to the Radio" and not a lot after. The band was part of the Solid Gold roster that got flushed down the toilet when the label went under. To make matters worse, whoever took Solid Gold's assets during receivership also managed to lose the master tapes to their debut record.

It had been decades since the band last released anything, and then with little fanfare there was a Facebook post a couple of years ago simply stating a "new" album was coming soon from the Pukka Orchestra. I was intrigued, and patiently waited for more information ... and I kept waiting.

Then on March 22, 2024, it dropped, and I immediately streamed it. The songs on Chaos Is Come Again were originally released on their '86 release The Palace of Memory, and 1992's Dear Harry. I never did manage to find a copy of Dear Harry, and it remains on my list of wanted treasures. Now, from what I can see, Dear Harry contained all of the songs from The Palace of Memory except for "Goldmine in the Sky" which I'm guessing stylistically was out of sync with the rest of the album, but dagnabbit that there shore is a good 'un. However, all has been forgiven and it is here as part of the chaos.

There were familiar bits and pieces, but it was fresh too - mainly because most of the songs from Dear Harry were new to me. Without getting into an A / B comparison it's hard to tell how deep Tony and Neil cut away from the original recordings. Graeme's ethereal, now ghostly, vocals are front and centre - the focal point of the songs.

It's strange to think it's already been a couple of years since they dropped this one. I still play it on occasion and try and imagine what might have been. The centrepiece of Chaos Is Come Again is "Knocking on Open Doors," represented twice - once with a more acoustic feel, and a full-band version closing out the album. It's a wonderful song. "Is it really that good?" you ask ... for me, the whole album is. Results may vary, but music is in the ear of the beholder.

It's an oddly bittersweet listen, the bones go back more than 30 years and one wonders at the labour of love this must have been for Neil and Tony to go back and update their vision while remaining true to the source material. The reality is this is an album for the fans, and the fans, although faithful, didn't number as the grains of sand on the beach.

I'm not complaining, Pukka Orchestra has long been one of those bands who occupies a special place on my Mount Rushmore ... okay maybe not Mount Rushmore, let's call it a substantial roadside marker with a great view - something worth your time.

The band only left behind a few artifacts to mark their passing. For those who stop to take in the view it'll leave an impression. The band was never pretty, although they made beautiful music. By going back and revisiting their past Neil and Tony rekindled the chaos and it is come again.

Billy Rankin - Growin' Up Too Fast

Growin' Up Too Fast was never widely released on CD (if at all), and it was one of the albums I really wanted to get back after a basement flood wiped out my vinyl collection in the '90s (when no one really gave a shit about records, and my insurance gave me a couple hundred bucks for an appraised $10,000 collection). Way back in 1984, my (dearly departed and greatly missed) buddy Dave let me borrow his cassette copy, which included a bonus track of "Get It On (Bang A Gong)." When I eventually bought the album, I didn't know it was a bonus track, or even what a bonus track was. If that sentence was hard to read, just go back and skim it. I'm sure you'll get the gist. I'd find out later Billy was an off-and-on-again member of Nazareth and wrote some absolutely killer songs for them. At the time, though, all I knew was this guy laid it out cold with the opening cut, "Baby Come Back," then proceeded to lay down one killer tune after another bef...

Styx - Paradise Theater

Styx was hands down one of my favourite bands as a kid. They were a strange band, even back then. They were a hard rock, almost progressive at times who had a penchant for sucky ballads. I know there's a tendency for people to zero in on "Babe" as the song that killed the band's credibility. The roots go way back to almost the beginning when Styx released "Lady" on their second album. It showed a side to the band that needed to be kept in check, and for the most part the band kept things on a pretty tight leash. The band had been setting a gruelling pace, releasing an album a year (two in 1972) and by the time they released Paradise Theater (if I end up writing theatre later it's because that's how we spell it here) in 1981 they'd dropped ten albums in less than a decade. I snapped this up as soon as I saw it, and it became a fixture on my turntable. Like the band had announced on "Borrowed Time" from 1979's Cornerstone , "Don...

Gary Numan - The Pleasure Principle

"Cars" was really the only song I knew by Gary Numan. I knew the name of the album the song came from. Over the years bits and pieces of trivia are accumulated, but in terms of his music it was still distilled down to one song ... It would be too easy to write Mr. Numan off as a one hit wonder, and I suppose in terms of actual chart hits this was his defining moment as a solo artist. Of course this really means nothing, as Gary Numan would drop an album a year pretty much through to the end of the '80s. He'd then slow down a little but continues to make music. While The Pleasure Principle was Gary Numan's debut solo release in '79, he actually cut his teeth on a couple of albums in a band called Tubeway Army, first with the band's self titled release in 1978, and then on Replicas that came out in April of '79. By the end of Tubeway Army's run most of the band would follow Gary into his solo career. Paul Gardiner who had been with Gary from the beg...

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