The Paisley Underground’s East Coast cousins Absolute Grey formed in Rochester, New York around 1983. A post-punk band in a small-town located a good seven-hour drive away from Manhattan. This live recording off the desk at CBGB’s in April 1985 catches them in the wake of their debut album Greenhouse from which the majority of songs performed derive.

You hear the influences of contemporaries and kindred spirits like REM and Dream Syndicate yet they stand apart; psychedelic in feel, baroque in attitude, at times starkly folkish. The Fairports and the early Airplane are invoked along with elements drawn from post punk; not just the Bunnymen and the Teardrops but perhaps also the Slits and the Pop Group.

In Beth Brown they had a singer and front-woman of precocity and passion, like an amalgam of Slick, Smith, and Ari-Up. The music’s angular, confident and driven, imbued with that magic of discovery, and the certainty of youth in those moments where you just jumped and hoped; guitarist Matt Kitchen and bassist Mitch Rasor both still only late teenagers.

The songs are powerful constructions with a definite identity and sound. It’s found particularly in Pat Thomas’s drumming, hard-hitting, but with that post-punk looseness, liberal with the cymbals, and in the chiming poesy of the guitar calling back to the Byrds, echoing peers Buck and Moore.

The set opens in the serious stalk of ‘Gardens’ before ‘Umbrellas’ encapsulates what Karen Schoemer calls the ‘paisley swirl of destiny and time’ and highlights Thomas’ exciting, exploring percussion. ‘Untitled’ then finds Brown wondering “maybe if I was someone else I wouldn’t feel this way” before the song with no name abruptly ends.

She’ll launch further lyrical rockets; in ‘More Walnuts’ – a song of transitions – “I’ve never felt anything like this before’ then in ‘A Joke’ “I want to go away with you but not to California”. The climax comes with a pair of big songs in ‘Memory Of You’ and ‘Willow’, then a singular cover of ‘White Rabbit’, and finally the startling ‘Killing Birds’.

That eerie last song tantalises, raising expectation, holds the future open. Absolute Grey would make more records but remain underground. This time capsule catapults us back to a thrilling moment of possibility.

The CD includes a twenty-four page booklet with contemporary photos and contributions from Karen Schoemer, Luke Wood, and Jim DeRogatis.