All Music Guide REVIEW by Richie Unterberger: While Damien Youth's long career has yielded an abundance of quality retro-acid-folk-rock, his influences have often been very much in the Syd Barrett-Robyn Hitchcock orbit. Alchemy is still quality retro-acid-folk-rock, but his influences broadened this time around to also encompass the late-'60s Beatles and early-'70s David Bowie (toss in some Leonard Cohen on Song for a World That Can't Feel for good measure). Those are hardly obscure reference points, of course, but they're both good ones, and ones that few people reference well. Damien Youth does reference all of the above well, and while the stylistic debts might be too apparent for some tastes, that doesn't mean these aren't well-constructed, clever songs. If you're going to play influence-spotting, there's a rephrasing of part of I Am the Walrus in Son of God and a dead-on re-creation of circa-Let It Be Leslie speaker-distorted guitar effects on I'm So Afraid of You, while Girl from Outer Space is one of the most convincing emulations of 1970-1971 Bowie you'll ever come across (as is, to an only slighter degree, Cinammon Garden). Yet there is something of Damien Youth himself to be heard in these tunes, particularly a witty irreverence and cheerful, slightly cynical hard edge that seems totally beyond the reach of most retro-mongers. The production is as good as you're going to get on an independent release that enjoys very little distribution or press.