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Its all fey, girl meets boy stuff putting one in mind of hairclips and old bookshops and dancing whilst looking at your feet.
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Its all fey, girl meets boy stuff putting one in mind of hairclips and old bookshops and dancing whilst looking at your feet.
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Hell, there are twenty musicians contributing to this album, that’s Phil Collins territory is it not? (not that this record bears any resemblance to anything put out by the Mouth of Sauron, but sometimes you’ve just got to point these things out).
Saturday Looks Good to Me (forever after known as SLGTM in this review) play pop tunes in the serious, studied way that bands circa 1986 used to. Its all fey, girl meets boy stuff putting one in mind of hairclips and old bookshops and dancing whilst looking at your feet. Not to say that its at all bad. I like it. It’s quite good fun though a little mawkish in places. It’s just not 1962 any more. Tell you what I’ll do, I’ll give you a few tracks worth of review then you can make your own minds up. Deal?
Okay. "Since You Stole My Heart" is a lovely brass led love song, very simple stroll along the promenade. There are the odd affected lyrical moments "I walk through the graveyard and sing to the cold stars" does jar somewhat, but on the whole its a lovely opener. "Keep Walking (this time featuring a ‘boy’ singer, did I forget to mention that there’s a lot of singer changes throughout this album, lending Every Night a feel of a recording by a teenage gang or sixth form class?) has a Big Star vibe to it, especially noticeable in the stop-start guitar runs. "The Girl’s Distracted" is a cute girl – boy conversation on the vocals, with the accompanying strings giving a lovely Saturday morning in town feel to it. There’s a slight change sonically on "When the Party Ends", (the album’s best song for me), hass got more of a Jonathan Richman flavour to it, dismissing the brass and piano in favour of stripped back acoustics and jangly guitar. Its a polemic of sorts, starting as a straight boy – girl relationship song and ends in a rant about anything and everything, really… Bloody good though.
Well; my initial impressions on the first few plays of this album were that I’d heard this kind of stuff many many times before. I was almost second guessing key changes at one point. But that would be an unfair summary. It’s a heartfelt piece of work, containing some great moments. There’s a great deal of good songwriting here but before I end up talking like an encouraging but patronising head of department writing out end of term reports, I’ll add the coda that I wish they’d shake some rug, get louder, use feed back or stop being too sensitive. Just a little bit.
Words: Richard Foster