The history of pop music now stretches beyond living memory, it is thus impossible to satisfactorily know every band, movement let alone song that has been produced within that particular sphere of the arts. However here is an album that provides a digestion of all musical styles bringing them together into a seamless and mature set of 9 singular songs that easily and deftly contains all the strands of ‘pop’.
The album is reminiscent but exceeding of so many bands and musicians that it could have come out in the 1960s tapping as it does into that English whimsical style of The Small Faces or Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd. It could also have been released in the 1970s redolent as it is of Patrick Fitzgerald or Those Naughty Lumps and into the 1980s it would easily sit alongside works by The Buggles or Robyn Hitchcock. Similarly in the 1990s it would be comparable to the likes of Pulp, but being from London this band is devoid of that particularly Northern species of angst. But all those possible influences aside it stands alone as a work at once individual and iconoclastic, but this is unsurprising when we realise that many of the band members were previously in The Beekeepers a band with a long and distinguished musical career.
This then is not a work by a band of poseur art students or unlived kids with a fatuous social message, but an assemblage of adults reporting the world as it is, not as it may be. In short a band at ease with itself, able to contemplate the experiences of a fully lived life and annunciate it from a vantage point born of and in sophistication.
The lyrics (and really there should be a lyric sheet) are beautifully constructed and whilst moving and profound have a lightness that deceives their impact. Many of the songs tell of the quotidian aspects of life such as doing the washing up (Washing Up) or shopping at a local bakery (Electric bakery) but on closer analysis they are revealed as expositions of all the intimate desires that motivate and move us. By concentrating on the simple aspects of life, we are then able to see deeper as if we look consciously at a single rain drop we are able to conceive the ocean. This is best expressed in the highlight track (Some dreams pass you by), if it is possible to single one track out, which is a gently lyrical Ben Foldesque song about letting go of youthful delusion. But the final track (Goth 2005) which immediately succeeds it brings us back again to firm reality, with its tale of finding unexpected love, to accept that however jaundiced we may become life continues if you allow it.
Funny, poetic and performed with a clear and obvious high level of technical musical ability, this is an album that will continue to grow on you.
To purchase the album or just to find out more information see: http://shammyleatherco.uk
This review has nothing to do with the fact that band member Ben just sent me this album as a present, nor his sister. I mean god its 25 years since I sat on her floor cutting my arm out of impossible infatuation :-)
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