Photo from Fallon Cush’s MySpace page by Nick DeRiso Fallon Cush grows more confident with each passing song on their self-titled debut. Perhaps because singer Steve Smith put this together on the fly, enlivened by passion and not weighed down by heavy planning.
theghostofasabertoothtiger.com by Nick DeRiso Featuring this dreamtime folk whimsy and a fabulist band name, The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger sound at times like Syd Barrett, or maybe Simon and Garfunkel. Or, like an ornate, late-night 1960s French pop singer, after perhaps one too many tokes. What they don’t sound like, not really, is John Lennon. And that’s saying [...]
by Nick DeRiso Equal parts Summer of Love songcraft and heartland soul, the Shamus Twins’ Garden of Weeds is as apt to jangle as it is to twang. That’s reflective of the Los Angeles-based band’s founders, guitarist Jerry Juden and bassist Tim Morrow, two halves of the same genre-busting whole. They take turns with songwriting duties, recalling the long-ago heyday [...]
by Something Else Reviews Writing can feel akin to tossing a flat rock across the surface of a shimmering river. You never know how far it will go, or just how wide those concentric circles left behind might eventually spread. Sometimes, the thing just sinks. Like, well, a rock. But other times, these entries take on a life of their [...]
by Nick DeRiso Erik Hartley can’t decide about things, and that uncertainty creates an interesting tension on the new EP Not Me Being Nervous. The in-joke ends up being that he’s anything but “not nervous.” Hartley, instead, couldn’t be less settled, with looming questions about girls, about life, about getting back some piece of himself after the day’s many small [...]
by Nick DeRiso A massive reissue project from Apple Records had me digging back through the old Billy Preston sides. None is more titanically funky, and lastingly influential, than “Outa-Space,” with its greasefire groove and afro-shaking new clavinet sound. “Outa-Space” is not to be confused with his similarly named No. 4 hit of a year later, “Space Race.” (Dick Clark [...]
By Nick DeRiso Paul McCartney’s “Band on the Run” still represents the creative highpoint of his career away from the Beatles, nearly four decades later. So, to paraphrase a tune here, what’s the use in repackaging the thing again? Well, a brilliant remaster of the original tapes, which have always been a little muddy, additional never-before-seen home movies from the [...]
by Nick DeRiso A Bob Dylan song reimagined into something like the Beach Boys, and also something like the Beatles — and nothing like folk music — propelled the Byrds to their first No. 1. Oh, and started the folk-rock movement. Among other things.It begins with Roger McGuinn’s guitar, sustained and bright, which was then paired alongside a complex harmony [...]
by Nick DeRiso “Double Fantasy” never felt dangerous enough to be a great John Lennon record. That started with this too-slick, of-its-moment presentation. I guess it shouldn’t have come as too much of a surprise, really, since the best of Lennon’s solo stuff after 1970′s “Plastic Ono Band” similarly suffered from dated, shag-carpety production. He loved a big sound, when [...]
by Nick DeRiso Spend enough time around rock music — or, at least, rock critics — and you’ll be convinced that any number of Seminal Works, Forgotten Gems and Timeless Standards are must-have items for your record collection. Even if they turn out to be, you know, retreads dressed up as brilliant pop redux (Gene Clark’s post-Byrds catalogue, many of [...]
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