For those of you who enjoy your pop on the baroque side, the new Brad Brooks album will definitely be your cup of tea. “Spill Collateral Love” contains a flood of orchestral and harmonic details with those guitar power chords. “Love on my sleeve” is a good track that recalls the hypnotically repeated guitar chords from Beatles’ “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” This is followed by “Lathered in Cream,” a bouncy, hook-filled classic slice of power pop and the obvious “single” on this album – unfortunately that’s it for the high energy songs. The rest of the album takes a rather moody turn. It begins with the melancholic “Ex-stripper Librarian” that sounds alot like a great Stephen Trask show ballad. “The Loon of Altitude” and “Francis of Alaska” mixes a bit of classic piano and Vaudevillian styled narrative rock that recalls Jellyfish’s best moments. In fact, Brooks sings his heart out on this album with an emotional resonance resembling Freddy Mercury or 10cc. I’m sure there is a full story connecting all these songs, with arcane run-on-sentence lyrics like, “..this town is a crazy playground of lost daisies are chaining…,” I’ll need to listen to it more. When we get to “The Sonic Twins” we get back to the classic Brad Brooks sound for a bit, before the album contiunes with the harmonica driven “Pleading Amnesia” that sounds like it would fit well on Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut or any Guided By Voices album. The album ends with “Luxurious Latitude” a fitting music-hall styled ending. It’s good to shake things up a bit and have power pop not so cheery, but very dramatic and visceral. Listen to this album streaming at Not Lame to hear it all.
Brad Brooks Site | My Space | CD Baby | Not Lame