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REVIEWS
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HIROSHIMA
YEAH! ISSUE 11 – JANUARY 2006
Aaahh, POP music, at LAST! Home-taping stalwart Dan Susnara is now
ALSO a top class ‘Hiroshima Yeah!’ live reviewer (see
this issue’s gig reviews). Following on from his recent cassette
single with Micky Saunders, this is his new full-length release
and very nice it is too. Spanning nearly both sides of a 90 minute
tape and containing 18 tracks, this is essentially a double album
but it contains varied enough content to be able to sustain that
length with ease. Opener ‘Spoken 4’ surprises and delights
with it’s almost dance-able beat then we’re faced with
the downright classic guitar pop of ‘Rainy Days and Sidewalk
Chalk’ (lyrically, this reminds me of none other than the
great Jimmy Webb), which leads us nicely into the psychedelic space
odyssey of ‘Curiouser’. Then Dan gets all Kinks-ian
on our sorry asses with ‘Pulls of India’, only it brings
the Ray Davies-isms kicking and screaming into the year 2005 via
some rather odd noises. Nice one! ‘For My Critics’ is
‘Bleach’ era Nirvana style stoner rock, no less, whereas
‘The Yellow Circle’ is sampling madness where the likes
of Cheney and Bush are hoisted by the petards of their own words.
They’re MORONS, maaaan! Possibly the albums’s finest
track is ‘Pinch Face’, a lovely Smiths-esque ballad
of aching longing. The kind of song I JUST adore! The sort of title
track, ‘Dealing with the Cusp’, has some cool lead guitar
licks and takes an interesting detour through 1980s style keyboard
sounds and vocoder-treated vocals. Over on side two, ‘The
Tryst Song’ cops a feel of Primal Scream’s ‘Rocks
Off’ (which, as any good rock scholar knows, was a Stones
rip-off), ‘Looking for Dreamstreet?’ is jangly and breezy
and nice while ‘Stare’ is all looping military beats
and oddly disturbing sampled speech about burning bodies and other
such not nice things. Thankfully, I couldn’t make it all out.
‘Boiler’ is the second loveliest song here, all tenderly
finger-picked with moving, poetic lyrics (check out the opening
line- ‘February strolls with laughing gulls that swoop and
chatter in a grey and unmoving sky’. Wow.) Everything’s
rounded off rather nicely with ‘Complicated’ which has
a GREAT tune. Overall, another fantastic release from a guy who
may not be as famous as your latest fad glamour boy on MTV but who
you should do yourself a favour by checking out.—Mark Ritchie
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