Where bought? Rise Records in Worcester. On the way home from lecturing one day. Remember it clear as day, even though it was a totally mundane occurrence.
The most recent studio release and the first one I bought. It's a great tight pop record with some weirdnesses by the standards of his contemporaries. Dials down the 'LA melancholia' and the novelty grabs of pom-pom (which I don't own). Some of the songs - 'Kitchen Witch', 'I Wanna Be Young', 'Feels Like Heaven' - feel like mainstream pop songs he wrote for various other artists and was turned down, so he did them himself.
There are sneaky little homages to other artists here - 'Santa's in the Closet' sounds like obscure deathrocker Maskull, while 'Another Weekend' saw Rosenberg cosplaying a little as narcocorrida Chalino. They're obscure nods and they don't become genre exercises.
The largest nod is in the title (and title track). It would be hard to say that anything here 'sounds like Bobby Jameson' because Jameson himself flitted around looking for a style and a commercial vehicle without much success. The inspiration Jameson gives to Rosenberg is much more oblique: Jameson's blog/memoir details an outsider artist before the term was considered, a man prone to self-sabotage, a ghost at the feast. If you follow Ariel Pink with any degree of closeness, you can see why this reality is appealing.
Back in 2012 he was anticipating his own backlash. No other musician is credited here, and only a couple of engineers and songwriters. I have a theory that his recent downturn was planned, or at least, was a demon always waiting to get out. The reissue cash was spent long before he started blabbing total political bullshit.
Anyway, this is a keeper.
No comments:
Post a Comment