One Of A Kind

The U.K. duo of jack-of-all-trades musician Will Turner and co-singer and -songwriter Georgie Fuller (who expand to a five-piece for live dates), the Heavy Heavy landed a record deal with ATO and appearances on U.S. TV shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live! and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on the strength of their debut EP, Life and Life Only. Early adopters of the group will be happy to learn that the buoyant presence and nostalgia-activating charm that won the Heavy Heavy this early attention is even more abundant on their full-length debut, One of a Kind. It finds the project drawing on an ever-expanding pool of familiar sounds stemming from the mid- to late 60s and spun through a hooky, harmonic mid-fi filter. The musical touchstones in play range from the raw, strutting rock of the early British Invasion to the hazier psychedelic pop/rock and adjacent folk-rock of acts such as the Byrds and the Mamas & the Papas, with a bit of gritty Creedence Clearwater Revival twang thrown in before theyre through. If that sounds like a lot, it not only clicks but goes down really easy, right from the albums invigorating opening track, "One of a Kind," which tends toward the early Beatles -- or maybe the Dave Clark Five? -- region of their musical-inspo Venn diagram. Regardless of reference points, its chafed vocal harmonies, rumbling blues undergirding, carefree guitar solos, and howling harmonica get things off to a spirited start. They keep the enthusiasm going on second track "Happiness," an early single whose sunshiny bittersweetness topped triple-A radio charts before the albums release. The records generous 12-song track list mostly continues in kind, with slight diversions into more-anxious psychedelic pop on an entry like "Feel," pastoral, keyboard-infused pop on "Wild Emotion," Woodstock-ian blues-rock on the Fuller-led "Dirt," and trippy, meandering atmospherics on the especially Mamas & the Papas-approached "Salina." While the Heavy Heavy do seem to lift the occasional riff, the songs here sound like recordings lost in time for the most part, and the songcraft exceeds "lost outtake" status, with songs instead demanding headline standing of their own. ~ Marcy Donelson