Alongside Edinburgh’s Dropkick, Ian M Bailey has been foremost recently in reviving the jangled and sun kissed era of Los Angeles pop and folk rock with particular reverence given to the sound of the Byrds and Roger McGuinn’s 12 string Rickenbacker.

This time around, on Lost In A Sound, Bailey and his co-writer, Glasgow’s Daniel Wylie, continue to mine the goldmine that is the heyday of California music but there’s less of the jangle and much more of the introspection and social awareness which characterised the shift from chart oriented singles to much weightier topics as the 60s progressed. The opening song, Rooks, blasts out, much as the opening song on The Byrds’ album Younger Than Yesterday did but instead of  singing about wanting to be a rock’n’roll star, Bailey delivers a fuzz fuelled anti war diatribe. With lyrics which could apply equally to the Vietnam War and current events in hot spots across the planet, Bailey and Wylie have a protest song which sings for the ages.

Of all the Byrds, David Crosby seems to be the guiding light on several of the songs here. While there is more than a whiff of Gene Clark on I’ll Be There To Save You Crosby looms large on White Whale and Deep Blue Water, songs which plug into his love of seafaring and his ecological awareness, years before the rest of us caught on. White Whale comes across as if Captain Ahab had forgotten his vengeance and grew to love and admire his nemesis, surrendering to the submarine sounds of the song. Deep Blue Water then wades in with stately piano and a myriad of fuzzed guitars, synthesised keyboards and, ultimately, a deep sense of calm as Bailey and his fellow player here, Alan Gregson, weave a hypnotic pillow of sounds.

Desert Star is a trippy instrumental which could fit well into the confines of The Byrds’ kind of in between album, Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde while the following Welcome To the Desert is a true descent into 1967 pop psychedelia. Never Read The Signs maintains the desert theme but in a much more cinematic style with its twangy guitars and sweeping string sounds reminiscent of Morricone and, more topically, Calexico. David Crosby’s ecological awareness is back to the fore on the sweet tones of Don’t Let The Garden Die, sweetened even more by some gorgeous lap steel playing and the album closes with a flourish on the grandiose swell of The Desert Could Be Mars, an ecological warning wrapped within a sci fi fable which abruptly ends with Bailey’s equivalent of the closing chord on Sergeant Pepper.

Along with his co-pilot Daniel Wylie, Ian M Bailey has mined this rich seam of Byrdsian pop/folk/rock over several albums now and Lost In A Sound shows that the pair continue to discover gold.

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