Cosmic Rough Riders - Enjoy The Melodic Sunshine

This intro is taken from Wikipedia and you can read the full article below:

This is a collection of songs featuring tracks from the band's first two self-financed albums as well as three new tracks. The album was put together by Alan McGee's Poptones label as a starting point for mainstream listeners. The album spawned four singles including the UK top 40 hits "Revolution (In the Summertime?)" and "The Pain Inside".

Although never reaching the UK Top 50, the album spent 17 weeks in the top 200 in 2001, peaking at No. 82. Steady sales meant that by the end of 2001, the album had achieved silver status (sales of 60,000) in the UK and it was named by Q magazine as one of the 50 best albums of the year. It would go on to achieve sales of over 100,000.

I got hold of this album around twenty years ago and loved the gorgeous sound with a definite summer-of-love feel to it, and it has been a staple of my listening throughout the last twenty years.

Some of the orchestration and instrumentation are almost to die for, so I just want to share some of the songs with you and say a bit about them and hope that you give them a listen.

Given that we are hitting the winter weather this may be a bit of sunshine listening for you although one song that seems incredibly uplifting from the music is very dark when you listen closely to the lyrics.

Brothers Gather Round / The Gun Isn't Loaded

"Brothers Gather Round" welcomes us into the album with a harvest festival feel completely putting you off guard for when the beautiful orchestration takes us into the very disturbing "The Gun Isn't Loaded" which still puts me on edge. You want to listen to the wonderful music but the lyrics are very dark. All about control by implied violence almost worthy of something like "The Wicker Man". Listen and tell me what you think about it.

Revolution (In The Summertime)

The hit single with a wonderful chorus, emphasising what we need in our lives. This was a live performance on Top of The Pops.

Glastonbury Revisited

This follows on from "This Gun Isn't Loaded" and has a wonderful positive festival vibe. I would love to go to this festival and it is a perfect uplift and the blackness of "This Gun Isn't Loaded", the sort of song that I can keep on repeat, although the rest of the album is still brilliant.

Melanie

A beautiful song of loving frustration, trying to reach a girl in New York and getting deported after letting her go and realising how much he misses her.

Have You Heard The News Today?

Although they don't sound like The Byrds I get the same feel-good factor from listening to the Cosmic Rough Riders. Their acoustic guitars and harmonies are just beautiful and sound as good today as when I first heard this song.

Baby, You're So Free

More gorgeous harmonies, with a vaguely eastern feel. The video has a silly start with a young girl trying to escape her mum to see the band in Castlemilk. It plays before the song if you want to rewind it but the song is absolutely stellar.

If just realised that CCR is the same initials as Creedence Clearwater Revival, I don't know if that was deliberate, as many of the songs fall into the same sonic universe.

Concluding Enjoy The Melodic Sunshine

This really is an essential album for your collection and the is a forty-song deluxe digital version on Amazon here. If you like what you have heard grab yourself a copy, you won't regret it.