Songbox＜限定盤＞

構成数 : 1枚
合計収録時間 : 00:00:00
What a pretty little album! Fans of '80s Creation Records will recall Astor -- Pete or Peter -- from his C-86-era jangle pop greats the Loft and more demure Weather Prophets. Since 1990, he's released five solo albums and pursued two projects, the Wisdom of Harry and Ellis Island Sound. Nowadays he's returned to the British public eye, thanks to face time in the Creation documentary Upside Down, a welcome 2006 Loft resurrection (they even released a single), and the novelty of stepson Wesley Patrick Gonzalez leading London killers Let's Wrestle. Perfect timing, then, for his best work in two decades -- in a very different form. Like Roddy Frame's 2000s return to greatness (unseen since 1984), Astor is well-served by going the chamber folk fingerpicker route, coupled with a spiritual simplicity that alights on the lightest, adorable Velvet Underground tracks. With wistful woodwinds, slight blues harmonica, female lullabies in the background, and other slender touches, he compares favorably with solo Edwyn Collins, Pink Moon, Nick Drake, and Donovan circa "Wear Your Love Like Heaven" and "Lalena." Plus there's a Continental air of rougher-hewn mystery to the catchy, light blues of "Slip Away" (very Robert Forster like), the foreboding "Dead Trumpets," and the macabre 6/8 waltz noir "The Perfect Crime." Friendlier "Four Letter Word" fetes love without guile, "Look Away" faces aging without worry (why fight it?), and "Tiny Town" shows a Ray Davies-like wit/eye about provincial English burgs. Gentle doesn't have to mean wimpy; it can be lushly invigorating and alive -- like Songbox. ~ Jack Rabid, The Big Takeover|