Those who are familiar with my reviews know all about my tendency to wander off in a strange direction at the start of one. Get ready I am going to do it again. Back in about ‘97 when Saturday Night Live was at pretty much its nadir I remember one unfunny Weekend Update routine where Colin Quinn was talking about Ben Affleck and Matt Damon being nominated for an Oscar. The premise of the joke is that Damon was the pretty boy and Affleck his ugly friend and that Ben did all the actual typing and work while Matt looked in the mirror a lot. Yeah as I said this was during the low point of SNL.
So what has that got to do with anything? Well I was reminded of that while reading the cover notes for ‘Apartment D’, the first release by studio duo ‘Pushcar’. The twosome Chris Farrell and Jim Saunders recorded the base tracks together. Then Chris took of on a once in a lifetime, around the world, thirteen-month trip. Jim stayed in the studio and did all the actual work. Seems fair to me!
Anyway whoever and whatever it took to get this CD together, the end result is excellent. A rich varied album without any obvious commercial heart, which nevertheless manages to be pretty catchy throughout its twelve-track existence. Originality without loosing sight of popular song structure is a difficult balancing trick. ‘Pushcar’ have it down to a fine art.
Opening the album is ‘Out Here in the Sun’, a fantastic little experiment. Jim Saunders wrote the tune after Chris Farrell had left. Stumped for lyrics he decided to take random quotes from his musical partner’s postcards from exotic locales and add on an answer machine recording that had been left from a Greek phone booth. The result is a haunting and surreal little piece that starts the CD off with a bang.
Several other musicians join our intrepid duo on this outing including Robert Gregorio, Damon Marshall and Stephanie Saunders. Many instruments are used as well, but this is an album that is really all about the guitars, which are pulled through many effective pedals, mixers and bags of tricks. The result is an invigorating blend of rock that is surprisingly unpretentious.
Also used to some great effect on tracks like ‘No waste of Space’ is an almost industrial undertone of throbbing bass and distorted drums. This is balanced with a cleaner undertone on other tracks. As I said there is plenty of experimentation, yet it all remains very accessible.
Track four is my choice for best of the album, a pure piece of pop heaven called ‘Defiant Song’, with my new favorite line of the week. "Hey you, you seem way out of my league, but are you having fun. Would you be betraying a movement if I turned out to be the one". All this in a pop tune wrapped around enough major chords to make you feel good all over. Excellent.
There are plenty of other great tunes on offer. 'Manic Depressive (without the Manic)' is another top class effort as is ‘Wasted Again’. Oh and the album is available on CDBABY for $10 and you can hear it first. What you are still here? Why? Go now before I start another SNL sucks story.

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