22 April 2022 (gig)
23 April 2022
Faced with a 250 mile trip back to their base in the Northeast, The Mentulls still played a superb set at the Tropic at Ruislip last night on their ‘Recipe For Change’ tour.
The band are now Andrew Pipe on guitars, Jamie Pipe on keyboards and multi-instrumentalist David Neil Crabtree on bass and guitar plus vocals, supplemented by new drummer Henry Rogers, and their Prog and Post-Prog music went down a storm with the crowd – I cannot remember seeing an audience in or near London actually shut up and listen to the band for many moons – as they mixed up new and older material.
With seven years between albums, I guess it is inevitable that the music has moved on and the band have developed and the change in style between the tracks from ‘Reflections’, which is predominantly a rock album with Prog leanings, and ‘Recipe For Change’, which is far more into the Yes/Asia side of Prog, really stood out but the audience lapped up all of the music and the two different sets of numbers create a really varied and enjoyable set.
Andrew’s guitar playing is a delight to watch as he seems to have no effort in ripping out some superb solos as well as killer riffs and David Crabtree showed himself to be a brilliant, understated, bass player as well as guitarist. Jamie Pipe switched between synths and a genuine Hammond and made for a great keyboard sound for the band.
Standout tracks for me were many: ‘New York Minute’ and ‘Reflections’ from the first album and ‘Easy To Walk Away’ and ‘Summit Fever’ from the new album were brilliant but really no tracks were weak or could be considered ‘filler’ and the closer, their version of ‘Theme from An Imaginary Western’, is absolutely killer.
An excellent evening of music from a band with a great deal of talent and some great songs.
