I’m grateful to a mate for tipping me off about this band a year ago. Let Her Go was exactly that astonishing thing he claimed – a collision of The Wolfhounds’ fury and The June Brides’ horn-driven melodic power in a sleeve similar to Cattle and Cane.
The Lodger’s debut album, Grown-Ups, has just come out. Its references are more of the above with a certain nostalgia for simpler, less sullied times that was a trademark of The Smiths or The Housemartins; and most recently was heard to infectious effect on Spearmint’s mighty A Week Away album.
Perhaps at fourteen tracks Grown-Ups overstretches itself a little, but when it does work it really is very strong indeed. The album’s not a classic, but there’s all the evidence here that they will write one at some stage. For proof, listen to Let Her Go over at the Slumberland site.
6 comments:
I haven't bought it, yet: I keep nearly doing so and then falling back in love with the idea that The Lodger is a band who will (and can) produce a single, perfect blast of pop (which is to say, "Let Her Go") and then nothing else of note.
That's probably not fair.
There's no escaping the fact that Let Her Go is their tour de force and, by the laws of pop, the measure by which everything they do will be judged (nobody said it had to be fair).
This does bring up an interesting point - which bands should have stopped after one perfect pop moment? The corrollary, of course, is that there are those who did - The Honeymooners, for example - and who will always leave us wanting more and wondering what could've been. But, again, that is pop music and one of the many reasons to love it so (fair or not).
corollary. I can spell, honest, guv.
Primal Scream! Are there any good examples from your deep knowledge of N. soul, Ben? I have a few reggae favourites who seem to have been one-shots ("Prophecy Reveal" by Bo Jangles is a great DJ cut on "Two Sevens Clash" and I'm not aware of any more Bo Jangles business) but that world is so murky...
(Incidentally I have a few Honeymooners demos and so on on CD if you fancy that spell being broken. Although they are actually extremely good.)
Oh, there are so very many in the world of northern. Most famously is Frank Wilson's Do I Love You (although he wrote so many songs for other Motown artists - Stoned Love, for example, or much of Brenda Holloway's output - that maybe we have a fair idea of what would've been).
I don't know of anything other by Tamala Lewis than You Won't Say Nothing, which is an all-time favourite of mine, written by George Clinton, no less.
Last night I was playing Not Now But Later by Walter Johnson that I *think* was his only cut. It's got a very southern feel - the man was cut from the same cloth as Redding or Carr. The bass on that song...jesus.
Yes, I think I would like to hear some other Honeymooners songs very much, thank you.
Oh yes, Hopkirk and Lee! The best single of 98 and what the fuck happened? Nothing! Come back, guys!
No! Stay away! Your discography works just fine with that one EP!
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