It's a fair bet that not many people will be aware of Honeycrack's Prozaic album. Well I guess you could say that's their loss. For the record Honeycrack was an outfit put together by The Wildhearts CJ in the mid nineties when, for a while, he parted company with that band. Joining CJ in Honeycrack was former Grip man Willie Dowling, a man who has worked with both CJ and Ginger regularly over the years as well as playing with the likes of Spike from the Quireboys. Dowling, as a writer in his own right, is extremely under-rated, his style is quirky yet poppy and combined with CJ the Prozaic album enabled Honeycrack to have a brief moment in the sun, mostly through appearances at major festivals including a spot at the Monsters Of Rock at Donington.

Indeed thinking back to Donington 1996, whilst the majority of people were there to see either Kiss or Ozzy Osbourne, Honeycrack were, at least for this reviewer the band of the day, even though they only appeared as second band on the Kerrang stage behind headliners Korn. The band gained further notoriety from an appearance on Chris Evans' TFI Friday where they ran through Sitting At Home, surely to the bemusement of most people watching.

The thing about Honeycrack was the fact that they were more pop than rock. Dowling's voice, which isn't really pop or rock but somewhere in between, wouldn't have been out of place in a boy band and combined with CJ's backing vocals the band produced a set of songs which were most definitely melody led. The whole album differed greatly from CJ's work with the Wildhearts. For a start it had a clean, summertime feel to it that spoke of innocence and youth, but at the same time managed to stay the right side of cheesy and. Dowling's lyrics were absolutely top draw, something that continues to this day with his current outfit Jackdaw4.

Despite Honeycrack only releasing this single full length album and failing to stay the course Prozaic was an album that opened up a whole new world for this reviewer. Underneath the mainstream rock and pop culture of the UK there's this underground of talent which slips beneath the radar and yet, most definitely is worth checking out. And a lot of that at the time, and since, has been centered around current and former members of the Wildhearts. From Honeycrack there were the Jelly's, and CJ's current band (at least outside of the Wildhearts) CJ & The Satellites. Then there was Willie Dowling's  post Honeycrack outfits, Jackdaw4 and Sugar Plum Fairies and of course all of the other Wildhearts off shoots and side projects that Ginger himself has been involved with. There's just a whole lot of good music out there to get your head round.

Let us know your views on Prozaic

Track Listing

King Of Misery
No - Please Don't
Go Away
Powerless
The Genius Is Loose
Good, Good Feeling
If I Had A Life
I Hate Myself And Everybody Else
Animals
Samantha Pope
Paperman
Sitting At Home
Parasite

Line Up

CJ - Guitars/Vocals
Hugo Degenhardt - Drums/Vocals
Mark McRae - Guitars/Vocals
Pete Clarke - Bass/Vocals
Willie Dowling - Guitar/vocals