Pop Culture Gadabout | ||
Tuesday, May 10, 2011 ( 5/10/2011 07:11:00 AM ) Bill S. ![]() “My heart keeps beating like a jukebox stuck on the Who,” Hansen sings in the disc’s poppiest track, “Just So You Know,” and if Feeling never attains the manic Moon-iness of that great band at its most raucous, it does display an affinity for sixties era hookiness. Whether singing an addictive celebration of beautifully losing (‘Anthem for Second Place”), considering the cultural function of flowers (“A flower is a strategy/Only good for I’m sorry please.”) or pulling in sweet-voiced cellist Katie Franich for a slow duet, the Noise-makers remain smartly tuneful. Many of the tracks deploy the same basic strategy: open with a slow thoughtful cello driven instrumental passage, followed by more emphatic rocking -- and it works every time. “It’s a shame to admit but we all wish that we’d die young,” the band sings in a group sing-a-long that amusingly name-checks Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club, and if this geezer doesn’t quite buy that particular sentiment, I do recognize the rejuvenating effect of hard-strummed electric guitar and sinuous keyboards. Grownup Noise? This aging bizness ain’t so bad, after all. (First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: art-pop # | |
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