Jonathan Richman, Tom Verlaine, The Go-Betweens, Sparks, The Chills, Fox the Fox, Love, The Byrds, Lloyd Cole, Shep Pettibone, The Shirelles, Neil Young, Norman Whitfield, Gene Clark, Nico, Exuma, Sam Cooke, Robyn Hitchcock, Lee Hazlewood, Harold Faltermeyer, Curtis Mayfield, Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, Carole King
Tracks 1 and and 2 are great and so is the Townes Van Zandt cover.
All together there´s a lot that reminds of Townes Van Zandt, and maybe of Billy Bragg if he were american.
The mix with drums on left channel on some tracks are anoying / refreshing, depending on your politics.
I like everything here but especially that the melody moves on, and also the instrumentation with the nice dull snare drum sound.
Maybe the singer could / should bring more energy but that's just something a boring critic would say. Good!
Now what´s this?
Some tracks are dub, some are almost longing for Jonathan Richman to enter the microfon, and then there's the french voice, and a jazzy segment.
Really nice inner city feeling.
I will listen to this again...
To be honest - the recording quality of this album are not the best. But I like the stuff and the reference to Neil Youngs "Old Ways" on the cover photo which is relevant. I could almost kill for the right to be the author of track 1 - "Beside You", it's beautiful. Good stuff