Pugwash - Silverlake

Eleven top tunes from Thomas Walsh! FFO The Beach Boys, ELO, McCartney and grown-up tuneful pop!

Regular readers of this here humble blog will know that one thing I particularly like is a song that's genuinely melodically memorable. After all there are lots of records that are sonically pleasing and great enough to listen to, but even after several listens you're hard pushed to actually remember the tunes. That's what makes this latest album from Pugwash such a delight. All eleven of its tracks have such soaring pop melodies, each one strong enough to warrant releasing as a single.

I'm saddened to say I've not had the fortune of stumbling across Pugwash before as this is actually their seventh LP, the band having formed 20 years ago. The man behind the melodies is Thomas Walsh, resident of Drimnagh, South Dublin. For this record he's joined by Jason Falkner of Jellyfish fame. Incredibly Walsh wrote all eleven songs on Silverlake within a week, and recorded them with Falkner producing at the latter's LA studio. If a record as strong as Silverlake doesn't bring Walsh to wider recognition it's difficult to think what would.

At various times recalling and rivalling the pop nouse of Brian Wilson, Jeff Lynne, Paul McCartney and Andy Partridge, the cumulative effect of so many earworms makes this one of the best feelgood albums of the year, or any year for that matter! From the opening summery pop of 'The Perfect Summer' onwards, Silverlake is intelligent, tuneful, heartfelt and wrapped in lush production. Very highly recommended!

Click here for more on Pugwash.

Click here for Lojinx Records.

Local Band Rivalry

Being in an unsigned band is for the most part a plateau of mundane experience punctuated by occasional highs and lows. The highs may include the kudos of playing the odd festival in the summer or getting some late night national radio play. The lows are when it costs more to get the van through its MOT than the amount you originally paid for it. Or somebody leaves and you have to replace them, losing any amount of momentum the band may have had. The mundane part is lumping gear around, organising practices, booking gigs and burning cdr's which you can't even give away.

There seems to be a limited set of experiences that all band share, signed or unsigned. Ask any gigging musician and they're bound to have tales of dodgy promoters, late night trips up or down the A1, playing to the proverbial 2 men and a dog in sticky floored venues. And that's just the good stuff!

One of the more ridiculous band experiences is that of local band rivalry. The music scene in general is a small gene-pool, any local scene even more so. These bands are all scratting round for the same gigs, may have to support bands they think should be supporting them. The first reaction to any other band's good fortune is to think that that should have been us. etc etc etc. I'll bet good money that even someone as successful and popular as Paul McCartney still bristles with resentment towards some also-ran Merseybeat combo. Perhaps that's human nature, I dunno.

Anyway, the reason I mention this is that it gives me an excuse to show a clip from one of the greatest rock films ever - "Slade in Flame", where Noddy Holder, singer with The Undertakers gets locked in a coffin by their local rivals. The fashions may change but the song remains the same....