Search - Kimberley Rew :: Essex Hideaway

Kimberley Rew's third solo album, Essex Hideaway, is his most consistent, his most fully produced, and by far his most nostalgic. It's a perfect, loving pastiche of late-'60s British pop rock. For the first time in his solo career, Rew is the only Soft Boy present on the record. Instead, for backup, he relies on some fellow Waves alums, as well as on former Kinks keyboardist Ian Gibbons and ace session drummer Dave Mattacks. Essex Hideaway opens with a tongue-in-cheek organ-and-choir invocation, "Bless This Album," and then dives right into what may be the highlight of the CD, "Phoenixstowe." With its stacatto, quarter-note piano, high backing vocals, and Mellotron, it's a blend of Paul McCartney and Ray Davies circa 1967, with an extended psychedelic guitar solo to leave no doubt that it's still Rew's affair. There's more where that comes from, too: "Short Smart Haircut" (featuring a juicy kazoo solo) and "That's Soft Boy" (with its McCartneyesque chord changes) both recall the music hall of the Kinks and the Small Faces. The title track follows McCartney into his domesticated '70s as Rew sings of "whisking" his love to their "Essex hideaway." And Rew doesn't neglect English folk, offering up the acoustic-guitar-and-Mellotron waltz "Arterial Road," a Village Green Preservation Society-like lament for an England that no longer exists. One could level the criticisms at Rew that the record is too short (it's not much over 30 minutes) and that, as on "Phoenixstowe," he has a propensity to take what are essentially short songs and fill them out with extended solos nearly as long again as the songs themselves. In less capable hands, this might have been a bad decision, but Kimberley Rew is one of the few guitarists of the last 30 years with both the composition skill and the chops to get away with it. As for playing time, Magical Mystery Tour, Ogden's Nut Gone Flake, and Village Green run for just about as long. Sometimes less is more! --Benjamin Lukoff