Nightfly The hard rock/metal scene seems somewhat flooded these days with female fronted bands on the dark side with occult leanings. Blood Ceremony, Avatarium, Devil Electric, Psychedelic Witchcraft, Witch Mountain, Jex Thoth…. The list goes on. All these bands have a strong retro vibe to their sound going back to the late sixties/early seventies period, most worshipping at the altar of Black Sabbath to a greater or lesser degree, at least at some point in their career. Jess And The Ancient Ones stand out because they haven’t ever really been there even if earlier material was more riff based than of late, but they still have a strong retro feel to their music – in their case the late sixties.

The Horse And Other Weird Tales is album number three from JATAO and sees them continue to hone their sound to an even more authentic sixties feel. It’s less of a hard rock/ heavy psych sound than their debut, something they seemed to be moving away from on Second Psychedelic Coming: The Aquarius Tapes though the psychedelic elements remained. This is no doubt partly down to the fact that they have slimmed from a two guitar line-up, losing Fiend along the way leaving Thomas Corpse as the sole guitarist. This has made room for keyboardist Abrahammond to move to the fore and in fact the keyboards now dominate though Corpse expertly plays off this weaving his guitar runs into the sound. Their music these days seems to bear more resemblance to the likes of Jefferson Airplane aided by Singer Jess displaying a not dissimilar timbre to Grace Slick and both having a powerful set of pipes. In fact she is a better singer than ever with improved phrasing and depth than previously displayed and she was no slouch before.

The songs are noticeably more streamlined these days, mainly around the three minute mark with only You And Eyes and closer Anyway The Minds Flow at eight minutes reaching the longer lengths previously favoured. They also have more immediate melodies but with titles like Your Exploding Heads and Death Is The Doors clearly still retain the quirkiness and darkness of earlier material. Despite overall consistency my album highlight has got to be Anyway The Minds Flow which is a beautifully haunting piece with Jess and keyboardist Abrahammond particularly excelling, a great way to close the album.

I haven’t quite made my mind up yet but this may be my favourite JATAO album so far. Having said that Second Psychedelic Coming was almost twice as long as this and certainly had plenty of moments to match what’s on offer here but for an immediate hit The Horse And Other Weird Tales is pretty hard to beat.