Hearty Har: Radio Astro (BMG/digital outlets)

 |   |  1 min read

Hearty Har: Radio Astro (BMG/digital outlets)

To give these two guys a break let's not mention their dad because too often that – as Julian Lennon would tell you – doesn't work in your favour much.

However the offspring of some Big Names (Ziggy Marley, Liza Minnelli, Jakob Dylan, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Zac Starkey, etc) have done very worthwhile work.

But let's just take this 11-song, post-punk but retro-garageband rock (and sometimes funk-rock), album – with sax -- at face value and say it's just what it is: pop-length songs delivered with a feel for Motown and the Knack as much as for Fifties pop (think Dion and the Belmonts) and raw sounds from the Pacific Northwest in the mid Sixties like the Sonics and Electric Prunes (as on Scream and Shout, Can't Keep Waiting, Get Down).

These guy also know their way around the tropes of mainstream Sixties pop-rock (Fare Thee Well) and unpretentious harmony psyche-pop (Waves of Ecstasy). And teenage frustration (Radio Man '56).

Always good to see a piece entitled Canyon of the Banshees, although this one isn't close to Roky Erickson or Jad Fair as you might think but opens with a fanfare like a Morricone spaghetti western soundtrack, then gets seriously into phasing and the whole Spanish/Mexican landscape of instrumental twang and desertscape guitars.

The perpetrators of this are Shane and Tyler whose surname is Fogerty.

They've toured in the dad John's band and of course were on the recent Fogerty's Factory where the family undertook slight revisions of a few of Father Fogerty's classic Creedence (and solo) songs.

That was kinda pointless . . . and maybe this album is too in that it doesn't reinvent any genre, makes no earth-changing statements or offer a breakout ht single.

However this is an album which, if listened to, many would enjoy for its lack of pretension and special pleading in an era when so many artists banner their socio-political virtues, want to be seen to be making Important Statements or relegate entertainment behind their artsy angst.

In many ways, it is the better for not being all that.

.

You can hear this album on Spotify here



Share It

Your Comments

post a comment

More from this section   Music at Elsewhere articles index

Michael Kiwanuka: Home Again (Universal)

Michael Kiwanuka: Home Again (Universal)

London-born to Ugandan parents, Michael Kiwanuka has become something of a "next big thing" in the British music scene, but on the evidence of this quietly confident debut album he seems... > Read more

Hot 8 Brass Band: On the Spot (Tru Thoughts/Rhythmethod)

Hot 8 Brass Band: On the Spot (Tru Thoughts/Rhythmethod)

Out of the many guests at this weekend's Womad you can guess that these guys from New Orleans – who deliver up pop-funk classics alongside originals and familiar tunes with their own twist... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

ROD STEWART, CYNDI LAUPER, JON STEVENS. REVIEWED (2023): All the hits, the misses and the final lap

ROD STEWART, CYNDI LAUPER, JON STEVENS. REVIEWED (2023): All the hits, the misses and the final lap

In this Age of Bitterness And Rage where many people take themselves far too seriously (expecting other to do the same) and humour seems in short supply, it's encouraging to know that 78-year old... > Read more

WASHED AWAY WORLDS AND IMAGES: Saturated stories and wet words

WASHED AWAY WORLDS AND IMAGES: Saturated stories and wet words

Many months on and I am still coming to terms with not just what we lost in the January flooding but what is now still in the lock-ups and unavailable to us. Hundreds of records with relevant... > Read more