ANDREW
What’s It All About? (Avebury; CD)
Andrew Sandoval’s third album finds him in familiar territory, somewhere between Elvis Costello circa Get Happy! (check the opening lines of ‘I Can’t Be Lonely’) and Pandora’s Box era Sunset Strip (the Farfisa squall of ‘Nevermore’). While the basic tracks rarely stray from this tried and tested LA formula, there are moments of baroque beauty on the mellotron-tastic ‘Or Maybe Not’ and the beautiful singer-songwriter confessional ‘Another Way Of Life’ and a couple of bona fide power pop gems in the Bobby Fuller-esque opener ‘We’ll Dream’ and the effortless ‘How Come It Takes So Long?’.
Throw in a telling and perfectly judged cover version of Grapefruit’s 1969 Britpop classic ‘Round Going Round’ and you’ve got a wonderfully summery guitar pop album. Just in time for the winter!
www.andrewsandoval.com
Andy Morten
THE BLACK LIPS
We Did Not Know The Forest Spirit Made The Flowers Grow (Bomp; CD)
This lot’s last album got a slagging on these pages back in May 2003 for being inept
LA-style hardcore. They’ve now switched to inept 1960s-style garage punk. Imagine an on-the-slide Standells playing a frat house having imbibed the entire rider before the gig, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of the general performance and production quality of the follow-up. There isn’t an original tune on it, and the ‘let’s all shout the lyrics at roughly the same time’ vocal approach owes a lot to the Notsensibles (“titting around” would, I think, be the applicable technical term for this). But there’s something quite compelling about the whole enterprise. The band clearly don’t give a damn, and for that they deserve our admiration.
www.bomp.com
Jane Farrell
THE DEADSTRING BROTHERS
Deadstring Brothers (Times Beach Records; CD)
SD sartorial fact #27: the old school tie and shirt combo is lame, lame, lame. Why do all
musos that wanna look retro throw a shirt and
tie on, paired off with ill fitting jeans and an old suit jacket? Yikes!
We know better!!!! At least two members of this "stoned" Alt country
rock band look the Keef and Gram part. Anyhow, none of this really
matters and it's the music that counts... but then I do always judge
books by their covers... The Deadstring Brothers take the Stones' Goats
Head Soup soulful country sound, which in part works: good playing with
plenty of pedal steel and electric piano, Jagger's intonation and even a
few decent songs. But... something's missing! There's not enough cocky
swagger in the playing, not enough fun, and, perhaps, not enough irony.
www.deadstringbrothers.com
Jon ‘Mojo’ Mills
THE FLAMING STARS
Named And Shamed (Vinyl Japan; CD)
The Flaming Stars are back on form on Vinyl Japan after a two year hiatus on Jello
Biafra's Alternative Tentacles imprint. Recorded at London Garage mecca Toe Rag, this is more of the same quality live-in-the studio rock'n'roll from the John Peel favourites.
Named And Shamed is indeed "effortlessly diverse" as the press release suggests, but essentially a good mixture of cranked up garage rock and shuffling smokey ballads. Forget the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds/Tindersticks comparisons, these guys are a lot more versatile and indeed more entertaining. On "The Marabou Shuffle" and "The Parade's Gone By" Max Decharne sounds more like Lloyd Cole, and "Spilled Your Pint" reminds me of The Fall at their best. Title track "Named And Shamed" is pure film noir, complete with haunting flamenco guitar.
Go get it.
www.vinyljapan.demon.co.uk
Mark Stevens
JAMIE HOOVER
Jamie Hoo-ever (Loaded Goat; CD)
Covers albums are awkward beasts. Only The Liquor Giants’ Something Special For The Kids and Wondermints’ Wonderful World Of spring to mind as recent long playing homages that I’d ever want to hear more than once. And even then, there are moments
when even they have you reaching for the skip button as one of your favourite middle eights is massacred.
To be fair to Mr Hoover, his choice of material is much broader than most, taking in Klaatu’s ‘Silly Boys’, The Bobby Fuller Four’s ‘It’s Love, Come What May’ and even ‘Theme From A Summer Place’ and although The Beatles, Todd Rungdren and Let’s Active are given the obligatory power pop deity seal of approval yet again, they’re represented by the less obvious ‘Only A Northern Song’ and ‘Goodnight’, ‘Izzat Love?’ and ‘Horizon’ respectively.
Unfortunately for Jamie Hoo-ever, the Spongetones front man was a damn sight more interesting when he was working with his own material. There’s a sterility here that materialises partway through the lumpen backbeat of the opening Travelling Wilburys classic ‘Handle With Care’ (which a self-confessed Beatles/powerpop nut like Hoover should be immune to screwing up) and regularly continues to blight the rest of the album, turning a potential goldmine into a quagmire. Hoover’s vocals seem restrained and non-committal, as if he’s frightened of damaging the songs by stamping his own identity on them. Wholly inappropriate production tricks like crude digital phasing and over-polished banks of harmonies add nothing to the proceedings, which, considering Hoover’s fair reputation as a producer, are all the more alarming.
Back to my worn-out copy of ‘Eloquent Spokesman’ I think.
www.jamiehoover.net
Andy Morten
NERVOUS SHAKES
Separate Beds? I Don’t Think So (Nun Records/No Fun Records; CD)
Having spent over a decade playing in Brussels-based garage bands (Hawaii City Five,
Shake Appeal), vocalist Ivan Dreini has finally formed a new band through which he could put his Johnny Thunders/CBGB fetish into practice. Enter Nervous Shakes and their hilariously-titled debut album which, while not extremely original, is choc-a-bloc with catchy choruses and Heartbreakers-like dirty riffs. Opening track ‘Get The Fear’ sets the tone straight away, Dreini’s impassioned vocals blending to perfection with Irishman James Cain’s high-octane licks. The albums consists mostly of originals (‘Swedish Love Gun’, ‘You Hypnotize Me’) but also features two inspired covers in The Queers’ ‘Number One’ and especially The Brats’ ‘Be A Man’.
www.tcd.ie/political_science/postgrads/patrick.bernhagen/rocknroll.htm
PMD
THE REDLANDS PALOMINO CO
By The Time You Hear This… We’ll Be Gone (Laughing Outlaw; CD)
I caught The Redlands Palomino Co live one Sunday afternoon in a Camden boozer in 2000 and was hugely taken by them. They reminded me of Gram and Emmylou andExile On Main Street but without the seediness or sloppiness and I loved the fact that they were the perfect foil to the warm beer and rain grey
streets that refused to lift the day beyond one of typical humdrum England. Fast forward to 2004 and to my great surprise and pleasure, it seems the Redlands are not only still working away at their thing but have cut an album that far exceeds my memories of that melancholy afternoon four years ago.
Barely a minute into ‘Music’s On’ with it’s immortal opening line “by the time you hear this I’ll be gone”, you know you’re in for a treat. Hannah Elton-Wall’s crystalline voice is a thing of beauty and, as one of two principal songwriters along with gravel-voiced brother Alex, is responsible for half a dozen absolute gems on this really quite wonderful album. ‘Goodbye Love’ reminds me of The Jayhawks chirpier moments like ‘It’s Up To You’ and ‘Angeline’ and is a future classic. I defy anybody not to feel a warm glow and tap a toe to its pure pop genius. ‘Get On The Train’ likewise is effortlessly commercial and, along with most of Hannah’s compositions, should be sitting atop the hit parade instead of being cranked out in various London dives to a dedicated few. Alex’s celebration of life on the road, ‘Doin’ It For The Country’, raises a smile with its hokie aspirations and rock ‘n’ roll roll call.
The production, courtesy of former Rockingbird and erstwhile solo artist Alan Tyler, is clean without being clinical and allows Hannah and Alex’s impeccable harmonies to shine and the layers of acoustic guitar, pedal steel, banjo and fiddle to breath.
An outstanding debut.
www.redlands.moonfruit.com
Andy Morten
SILVER SUNHINE
Silver Sunshine (Empyrean; CD)
The first 30 seconds into ‘Velvet Skies’ and Silver Sunshine’s eponymous debut and you’re thrown headlong into full on ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ hypno-territory with the guitar motif from ‘Third Stone
From The Sun’ bolted on for good measure. The processed vocals, massed backward guitars and lyrical allusions to “colours flashing in my eyes” leave no doubt as to Silver Sunshine’s ’67 Kings Road persuasions. Second track ‘I See The Silver Sunshine’ begins as a virtual re-write of ‘I Can Hear The Grass Grow’ before sliding into a stew of mellotron strings, phased vocals and a surprise dual lead guitar break.
Hopefully, stacking these two homages at the top of the album won’t dissuade some listeners from investigating the less contrived wonders that lie beyond. Of the band’s three songwriters, front man Richard Vaughan’s pieces are the cream of the crop. While his ‘Trinkets’ and ‘Greenfield Park’ tread psimilarly psych-pop paths to their more identifiable predecessors, they’re undoubtedly stronger songs full of accessible hooks and accomplished guitar strangling. ‘Miranda May’ comes on like an early 80s paisley underground reconstruction of ‘Candy And A Currant Bun’ before giving way to the lysergic charms of bassist Stuart Sclater’s lone contribution ‘Merry Go Round’, whose closing kitchen sink sonic overload is a fittingly explosive end to this dynamite little album.
www.silversunshine.com
Andy Morten
THE WINDBREAKERS
Time Machine 1982-2002 (Paisley Pop; CD)
Despite brandishing a moniker that would invite schoolboyish titters at every turn in the UK,
Mississippi’s Windbreakers formed part of a Southern pop alliance with the likes of REM and Let’s Active in the early 80s. Essentially a duo comprising Bobby Sutliff and Tim Lee, they released several LPs, EPs and singles throughout the decade, usually overseen and musically bolstered by uber-producer Mitch Easter who managed to steer the sounds away from some of the era’s less flattering stylistic fancies.
The 1982-2002 subtitle here is a little misleading as only two 2001 tracks, ‘Time Machine’ and ‘Basket Case’, represent anything cut after 1989’s At Home With Bobby And Tim. Fittingly, these are two of the strongest tracks on this 20-track retrospective from the indecently productive Paisley Pop label. Sutliff and Lee’s minor-key guitar pop contains many magic moments, particularly the chipper ‘I Never Thought’ and the uncharacteristically dark ‘On The Wire’.
www.paisleypop.com
Andy Morten
