Michael Head and the Red Elastic Band - Adios Senor Pussycat - Violette
Incredibly, it's been around 35 years since Michael Head's first foray into music - his first band The Pale Fountains issued debut single (There's Always) Something On my Mind on boutique label Les Disques du Crepuscule (and UK subsidary Operation Twilight) to much acclaim but little in the way of sales. However, it garnered the band a major-label recording contract with Virgin and for the next few years at least, Head's strength as a songwriter shone out across two pin-sharp albums.
He's continued the trend with the impressive Shack, the less celebrated The Strands and most recently Red Elastic Band yet Head is still relatively unheard of. Will Adios change all that? Probably not. But those who respect the man and revel at the prospect of any new material from this most likeable of Liverpudlians won't give two hoots about the inevitable superlatives coming his way. It's another cracking set of songs, enough said.
Opener Picasso recalls all four corners of Head's musical world, a woozy folksy meander over rolling hills and summer days spent in a suggested haze of unrequited dreams and solitary enlightenment. It's one of this songwriter's oft-used templates - a gently acoustic shuffle with a melancholic melody from the same stable as If I Was a Carpenter or his own Captain's Table (from Shack's HMS Fable). It works well enough to repeat on 4 and 4 Still Makes 8 at any rate, that's when he's not reliving his '90s guitar-based highpoints like Waterpistol or The Magical World of the Strands. Josephine, Rumer, the excellent Workin' Family and Queen Of All Saints are soaked in fuzzy psychedelia a la Love, the Velvets, Cast (unsurprisingly) and, dare one suggest, Oasis. Thankfully the songs rise above the occasionally cluttered production and for the most part making Adios Senor Pussycat (sorry) head and shoulders above the many painfully average indie-pop bands around today.
As an aside, if ever there was a record-jacket that celebrated an artist's current state of mind and the contents within then this album has it and despite brother John Head being absent from these sessions, there's enough to draw you in.
7.5/10
He's continued the trend with the impressive Shack, the less celebrated The Strands and most recently Red Elastic Band yet Head is still relatively unheard of. Will Adios change all that? Probably not. But those who respect the man and revel at the prospect of any new material from this most likeable of Liverpudlians won't give two hoots about the inevitable superlatives coming his way. It's another cracking set of songs, enough said.
Opener Picasso recalls all four corners of Head's musical world, a woozy folksy meander over rolling hills and summer days spent in a suggested haze of unrequited dreams and solitary enlightenment. It's one of this songwriter's oft-used templates - a gently acoustic shuffle with a melancholic melody from the same stable as If I Was a Carpenter or his own Captain's Table (from Shack's HMS Fable). It works well enough to repeat on 4 and 4 Still Makes 8 at any rate, that's when he's not reliving his '90s guitar-based highpoints like Waterpistol or The Magical World of the Strands. Josephine, Rumer, the excellent Workin' Family and Queen Of All Saints are soaked in fuzzy psychedelia a la Love, the Velvets, Cast (unsurprisingly) and, dare one suggest, Oasis. Thankfully the songs rise above the occasionally cluttered production and for the most part making Adios Senor Pussycat (sorry) head and shoulders above the many painfully average indie-pop bands around today.
As an aside, if ever there was a record-jacket that celebrated an artist's current state of mind and the contents within then this album has it and despite brother John Head being absent from these sessions, there's enough to draw you in.
7.5/10