LP Review
Dr Cosmo’s Tape Lab ‘Ever Evolving Lounge’ 30th June 2014
If Jeff Lynne’s Idle Race, circa their eponymous 1969 album, were transported forward to the Olivia Tremor Control’s studio in 1999, or Wings and The Dukes Of Stratosphear feasted on the I Can See For Miles re-issue label in the late 80s, then the results wouldn’t sound too dissimilar to this sunny dispositional pop-sike collection of paeans from the mischievously nostalgic duo, Dr Cosmo’s Tape Lab.
Saying that, the Ever Evolving Lounge (cannily named in competition by the fans on the bands website) begins with a couple of anthropomorphic animal themed pop tunes from the Beach Boy’s Wild Honey catalogue. And goes on to evoke the more surf noir ‘Cabin Essence’ of California’s favorite sons, on ‘Trading Time’.
But if there is any one overriding presence to be found permeating throughout, then it’s the ever-looming Paul McCartney – mostly his post-Beatles epoch, though there are occasional flickers of the Fab Four’s Abbey Road to be found.
So it’s McCartney fronting Ronnie Lane’s Slim Chance on the whimsical ‘Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road’. McCartney reinventing The Kinks’ ‘Ape Man’ with the mooning, jaunty, evolutionary trip ‘Animal Man’, and McCartney meandering down a country road with Bread on ‘Broken Star’.
It’s as if the duo of Joe Kane (The Owsley Sunshine, Them Beatles) and Stu Kidd’s (BMX Bandits, Wellgreen) bedroom studio is cocooned in a halcyon bubble, cut off from the last 15 years of music and cultural development. Not for them the fleeting fancies and sub-genres of the noughties and beyond.
Placable enough, even when the setting the dials for optimum craziness, this merry-go-round kaleidoscope of bygone melodies is an affectionate, warm-hearted treat for the ears.
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