BUDGIE – You’re All Living In Cuckooland (2025 reissue) *HQ*
BUDGIE were a Welsh trio from Cardiff formed in the late Seventies, and they were one of the first to explore the proto-heavy metal sound along with blues-oriented hard rock. The band, usually a classic power trio with the occasional keyboard player, released ten albums, with MCA, A&M, and RCA, between 1971 and 1982, attracting a fair number of fans and becoming a cult act over the years.
After a whopping 24 years since their last studio album, BUDGIE returned with the curiously titled LP “You’re All Living In Cuckooland” in 2006, and it was what nearly every fan of the band had considered long impossible: a genuine comeback.
Indeed, ”You’re All Living In Cuckooland” sounds like classic BUDGIE to the last detail. The cover art even looks like classic BUDGIE! No computer generated images here, and the classic Budgie logo is intact. Now 2025, after many years out of print, the album is being reissued.
Still fronted by vocalist / bassist Burke Shelley (passed away 2022) and with drummer Steve Williams returing, the guitar slot was filled by the excellent Simon Lees (although Craig Goldy of DIO / Giuffria toured with them a lot).
Right from the first track “Justice”, you know that Budgie are back. Shelley’s unmistakable voice is as vintage-Geddy as ever, and the sound of this band has hardly changed at all. Maybe there are some slicker effects on the guitars, but the style is 100% Budgie.
Songwriting is especially diverse on this particular record, with the ballads making a surprise comeback, both in quantity and quality. The title track is a particularly winsome specimen, featuring soft guitars and a nice melody from the aging Shelley. A song that remains lodged firmly in your skull for days.
The others, “Love is Enough” and “Captain,” are both stylistically reminiscent of classy 70s ballads (see Rush’s “Rivendell” for instance) but the ballads were never a real focus for Budgie or their fans. The almighty groove was what counted, and Cuckooland delivers on that promise.
The tracks tend to fuse all the group’s various stylings into a single cohesive flow. “Funky hard rock” might be an adequate description of the overall sound here, but even that fails to take into account some of the spacey, acoustic bits and progressive nuances.
Some tracks are fairly straightforward but enjoyable affairs like the aforementioned solidly heavy operner “Justice”, “Falling,” and “Dead Men Don’t Talk” and its positively squirrly solos. But others aim higher, such as “Tell Me Tell Me,” a soft/loud experiment with interesting, clashing dynamics and an especially keen solo.
Lees’ expansive guitar work is just really fun to listen to: less than halfway into the album and I could hardly wait to hear what he’d throw at me next. All the extraneous weirdness of the album finally condenses into physical form on the extended final track, “I’m Compressing the Comb on a Cockerel’s Head,” which is basically a long jam on a single idea suitably bizarre enough to end an album of theirs. Yet another oddball Budgie song title too. We love it!
The songwriting is still idiosyncratic Budgie, except for some unaccompanied acoustic tracks which Burke wrote alone. Musicianship is in the forefront and production is sharp vintage, quite retro.
Fans of true Seventies hard rockin’ vibe need to hear ”You’re All Living In Cuckooland”.
Highly Recommended
01 – Justice
02 – Dead Men Don’t Talk
03 – We’re All Living In Cuckooland
04 – Falling
05 – Love Is Enough
06 – Tell Me Tell Me
07 – Don’t Want To Find That Girl
08 – Captain
09 – I Don’t Want To Throw You
10 – I’m Compressing The Comb On A Cockerel’s Head
Burke Shelley (RIP) – lead vocals, bass
Steve Williams – drums, percussion, backing vocals
Simon Lees – guitars
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