The return of The Zombies

The Zombies
Breathe Out, Breathe In
***

It's a little-known fact that, when The Zombies toured the US plugging their 1964 hit She's Not There, the band's then-drummer Hugh Grundy performed a fun task for the Shangri-Las. When the girl group played on the same bill and sang their biker-themed hit Leader of the Pack, it fell to Grundy to supply sound effects by revving a motorcycle just off-stage.

That tidbit also serves as a metaphor, for The Zombies would soon grow used to watching from the wings. Even their 1968 gem Odessey and Oracle (sic) - later seen as a psychedelic masterpiece - failed to chart in the UK. A single from the album, Time of the Season, eventually reached number three in the US in the spring of 1969, but by that point The Zombies had folded and the singer Colin Blunstone was working in insurance.

The current re-formed line-up includes key founding members Blunstone and Rod Argent (keyboards). Shows in 2008 to mark the 40th anniversary of Odessey were warmly received, and now, a gob-smacking half-century since the band formed in St Albans, England, comes their sixth studio album, Breathe Out, Breathe In. The brief, Argent has said, was "to use as many two and three-part [vocal] harmonies as possible". The album was recorded at his own Red House studios, and features lots of the meaty Hammond organ playing for which he is renowned. Jim Rodford (The Kinks, The Swinging Blue Jeans) is on bass, his son Steve plays drums, and guitar duties fall to the Somerset-based session player, Tom Tooney.

If the group has a trump card, it's Blunstone. His high, plaintive voice is still in great shape on the Latin-flavoured Any Other Way and the punchy Another Day, two songs that lend the reformed Zombies a dignity and validity that is sometimes lacking in superannuated 1960s rock bands. Not all of the music here sounds quite so credible, alas, but thankfully the slight whiff of dinner-jazz piano that hamstrings the title track quickly evaporates to reveal a tight arrangement reminiscent of early-period 10cc.

Christmas for the Free, previously recorded for a 2009 Blunstone solo album, is a song out of season here, and Tooney's 1970s-style guitar solo doesn't bed down well. Far better are Let It Go, which sees Argent weave in elements of Bach's F minor keyboard concerto, and I Do Believe, wherein the record's promise of rich vocal harmony is made especially good, Blunstone sliding up into a creamy falsetto.

Both Blunstone and Argent are 65 now, so it's perhaps inevitable that a concomitant drop in testosterone is audible. This isn't a big deal, though, for The Zombies' music was never reliant on bombast, and so it is here. Established fans will find plenty to savour on Breathe Out, Breathe In, but its track listing seems somewhat cobbled together and the input of the group's original bassist Chris White is missed. Not for nothing did White write seven of the 12 songs on Odessey and Oracle.

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