Album Review - The Poppermost - Hits to Spare
The long-awaited new album from 60s Pop enthusiast Joe Kane a.k.a The Poppermost, came out on July 30th. Ryan Doyle Elward takes us through this playful new release.
With 'Hits to Spare', The Poppermost boost flashbacks of bright orange and all other casts of psychedelic colors (well, pre-psychedelic technically), returning to an era bygone, of Rickenbackers and biting, bare reverb.
There is a surrealness by this design, an occurrent awe and almost bewilderment to the quality of replication as The Poppermost (don’t think they but actually he, just him, Joe Kane) are able to suspend time and place,to be for a moment transmutable in all but skin as a result of such an authentic and total reconstruction of ‘60s
sound.
But out of the early part of that decade it is The Beatles specifically who are here reanimated, where for each of the album’s songs or intra-song elements there are near-Beatles equals: observe the likeness between ‘Ticket to Ride’ [Beatles] and ‘Park and Ride’ [Poppermost].
This and the rest of album are rich amalgamations of The Beatles’ most recognizable and infectious attributes from their first years, where revisiting The Beatles to find those corresponding parts can hardly be prevented.
'Hits to Spare' is strung predominantly along the timeline of ‘63 – 65 Beatles, but ending before 'Rubber Soul', since that’s when the band started to embark (the first of a few) for new bearings in their songwriting (namely but not only: the use of the clavichord, use of the sitar – thus, a coming into folk and international influences – a shift in the focus and content of lyrics, and a movement away from four or five chords walling in their songs and toward single notes in lead style structure lacing throughout).
There were of course many other artists who played the same instruments and composed similarly to The Beatles during that span of time, for example The Dave Clark Five or Herman’s Hermits; and it is important to conceive of their music and The Beatles’ as being intertwined; influencing one another’s trajectories tit for tat.
‘One of Those Gerrllss’ breaks out from The Beatles-mould and becomes more like ‘Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter’ (listen to the vocals) and borrows from ‘Dead Man’s Curve’ [Jan & Dean] or ‘Leader of the Pack’ [The Shangri Las] (largely the structure and mid-track monologue, both 1964) while ‘Laziest Fella in the Realm’ reaches for acts like The Turtles or Tommy James & The Shondells (late ‘60s).
Glasgow group The Poppermost awakens an essence once collecting dust in the mausoleum of music. Yes, plenty have made accessory of or built on the early Beatles’ (Cool Ghouls, The Growlers, Angel Olsen, The Strange Boys, and on and on) – have taken notes from the sixties sound without stopping to sit still in the time period – but 'Hits to Spare' is special in that something so well-mirroring a portion of another artist’s legacy by can still be refreshing, and a great deal of good old-fashioned fun.
r.d.e
and if you're looking to buy, buy direct from Bandcamp
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