The Golden Palominos and A Dead Horse

A Dead Horse

I remember buying this album on some recommendation from a music magazine in the days when I used to buy music magazines.

One review runs thus:

“This loose confederation serves mainly as an outlet for its key members while they offer stellar studio work, and serve as a showcase for new-ish talent. Generically, this runs the gamut from Steely Dan studio wizardry to indie anarchy, but with such polish throughout that the musicianship is reason enough to listen” and that is good enough for me and hope it may pique your interest

On listening to the album, the sound is beautifully dark and brooding consisting of seven songs each generally longer than the previous one, though none are particularly short.

The additional members included Robert Kidney and Amanda Kramer who featured heavily on the song composition for the album. If you look and the song titles you can see the darkness there although the music is wonderful.

I was surprised to find very little about the album when searching on Google, maybe this will at least add a little more to it’s legend.

"Wild River" written by Robert Kidney

The album opens with “Wild River” written by guest guitarist and singer for this album Robert Kidney and this sets the mood for the album. No one apart from Amanda Kramer is credited with Vocals on the album so I am not sure who the male singers are.

"Shattered Image" written by Amanda Kramer, Anton Fier and Nicky Skopelitis

This comes in with an ominous descending guitar sound but Amanda’s vocal contribution is almost angelic and heavenly.

"Angel of Death" written by Amanda Kramer, Anton Fier and Nicky Skopelitis

This beautiful song again has Amanda on vocals and does remind me of “Darklands” two songs on in the albums, with drums and ominous acoustic guitars driving it slowly, a wondrous way to spend five minutes.

"Lucky" written by Robert Kidney

This is a standard rock song but slickly produced like the rest of the album. It is my least favourite song on the album but would stand out on a lot of albums, so I don’t feel I need to skip it and I know what is coming next.

"Darklands" written by Amanda Kramer, Anton Fier and Nicky Skopelitis

“Darklands” and “Angel of Death” are eleven minutes of beautiful darkness in an unknown wasteland with Amanda’s angelic voice making us want to be here, and these are split by Robert Kidney’s “Lucky”, but the who album does flow so perfectly. I do play this a lot and it is always played start to finish.

"A Letter Back" written by Robert Kidney

These seven minutes of excellence, I am assuming that the Robert Kidney compositions feature him on vocals. This is on a par with the opening song but contains lots of dark lyrical snippets, such as “You Will Only Add Your Salt To The Sea”.

"Over" written by Amanda Kramer, Anton Fier and Nicky Skopelitis

This is the album closer., with the same feel as “Angel of Death” and “Darklands” with an out of phase backing which just makes an incredible feel to this wonderful finale.

The Golden Palominos

The band are headed by drummer and composer Anton Fier. They were first formed in 1981. Aside from Fier, the Palominos membership has been wildly elastic, with only bassist Bill Laswell and guitarist Nicky Skopelitis appearing on every album through 1996.

The Palominos' records usually featured a core set of musicians and a certain emotional continuity throughout the bulk of an album, various guest appearances resulted in stylistic changes from track to track. Guests have included Michael Stipe and John Lydon.