Search - Martin Gordon :: Time Gentlemen Please

Thrashing guitars, thrumming ukelele, raucous brass, double bass and bar-room piano provide the sonic back-drop. The sterling vocals of Swede Pelle Almgren are once again to the fore, and his glorious trademark harmonies are a career-best, especially on the über-ballad `21st Century Blues'. Live performance is key, and studio trickery is either reduced to a minimum or is transparent. In correspondence with the bigger picture, each song has an ending, with not a fade to be heard. From faux big-band swing (`If Boys Could Talk and Girls Could Think') to breakneck amphetamine-pop (`Interesting Times'), from dramatic big-hair ballads sung in Latin about the perils of celebrity (`Incognito Ergo Sum') to pub-piano sing-alongs bemoaning cheap flights (`I'm Budgie (Don't Fly Me)'), from crunching pop decrying the actions of the Almighty (`Come Out Come Out Whoever You Are') to the quasi-Floydian epic `You Can't See Me' which closes the set, Gordon spans the gamut. The sonic melange includes flocks of bleating sheep (`I Have a Chav'), the gentle splashing of waves around the protagonist's canoe (`Panama') and the uncertain countdown of the flight controller at the Kennedy Space Centre (`Houston We Gotta Drinking Problem'). Take the blueprint of popular song, redesign to serve the purposes of rock, add a leavening of George Formby and the anarchic absurdities of Stanley Holloway and the Bonzos, and file under `new music-hall'.