The Doubtful Sounds: The Pop Album (doubtfulsounds.com)

 |   |  1 min read

The Doubtful Sounds: Colonel
The Doubtful Sounds: The Pop Album (doubtfulsounds.com)

On the brief opening track here Doubtful Sounds promise "a pop album you'll want to listen to" and thereafter deliver a sort of early Flying Nun guitar strum'n'jangle which brings to mind early Chills, Bats et al.

So the promise of "a pop album that'll make you smile" is true in one aspect, smiles of recognition.

Recorded in Auckland, sounding Christchurch/Dunedin and referencing Pirie St and Oriental Bay (Wellington), DSounds seem to have gone for the pan-Kiwi approach . . . but then throw in lyrical references to world's great oceans on Arctic Ocean, and -- on the piano-lead if somewhat limp ballad Fifty Million Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong -- Caesar's Palace, Kazahkstan, Mexico City, Old London Town and Kings Cross. All nodded to as how far the influence of the King spread.

A two-piece of Matt Cawte and James Noble with assistance from friends, DSounds barely nudge the envelope but rather locate themselves firmly within a tradition of Kiwi pop-rock which should make you smile on songs like the increasingly urgent Bats-like Here Right Now and the languidly lightly-delic Red Sky.

The Doubtful Sounds -- not to be confused with Doubtful Sounds or A Doubtful Sound -- employ a fairly narrow musical palette and this is undeniably pop of the old school Eighties.

Whether you want to dive into that back-catalogue/heritage is over to you . . . but I suspect if you heard this style all those years ago then you'd be smiling sometimes but mostly shrugging your shoulders.

Still, there are more than a few bands (some on Arch Hill) who have gone down this well-worked mine and they seem popular enough. But the nuggets they bring back are rare and small. As is the case here.

Share It

Your Comments

post a comment

More from this section   Music at Elsewhere articles index

Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra: Rockinghorse (Rhino)

Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra: Rockinghorse (Rhino)

The celebrity-guest collections and R'N'B Orchestra discs from Jools Holland have often been tasty but a few not entirely successful. This sometimes breathless rush of boogie-woogie piano, big... > Read more

Julian Lennon: Jude (digital outlets)

Julian Lennon: Jude (digital outlets)

Few would chose Julian Lennon's life: an absent or indifferent famous father whose murder severed any further possible contact when he was 17; his own musical career always inviting a comparison he... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

TRAVELS IN THE TIME OF COVID #13 (2022): Home here and there

TRAVELS IN THE TIME OF COVID #13 (2022): Home here and there

A peculiar thing happened a few weeks ago, the day before we left Edinburgh. When we stopped at a service station to fill up the rental I glanced across the road and on the other side was the... > Read more

The Beatles: I Saw Her Standing There (1963)

The Beatles: I Saw Her Standing There (1963)

Half a century ago the Beatles' debut album Please Please Me was released. Legend has it that it took only 16 hours to record, the final song being Twist and Shout, for which Lennon --... > Read more