{"id":14209,"date":"2018-03-10T09:49:20","date_gmt":"2018-03-10T14:49:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=14209"},"modified":"2018-03-10T09:49:20","modified_gmt":"2018-03-10T14:49:20","slug":"album-review-ajay-mathur-little-boat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2018\/03\/10\/album-review-ajay-mathur-little-boat\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Ajay Mathur \u2013 Little Boat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-14210\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/ajay_mathur.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/ajay_mathur.jpg 350w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/ajay_mathur-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/ajay_mathur-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>In the years just before punk broke in the UK, there was a musical scene bubbling under that would exert an influence on punk while (quietly) providing a bridge between mainstream rock and its more jagged variant. Like garage rock and freakbeat, the scene didn&#8217;t really have a name in wide use at the time; its lable was coined later by musicologists and record collectors. Pub rock was the name given to the music made by acts like Brinsley Schwarz and Ducks Deluxe; its blend of melodicism, subtle country elements and a solid beat wold inform the sounds made later by Elvis Costello and his contemporaries.<\/p>\n<p>Pub rock also drew from other musical traditions, folding them into the mix. And it&#8217;s somewhat unexpected that someone would be making a kind of modern pub rock well into the 21<sup>st<\/sup> century, but here we are: Ajay Mathur is from Switzerland, though you&#8217;d never knowing it listening to the music on <i>Little Boat<\/i>. \u201cForget About Yesterday\u201d mixes in Indian percussion and the \u201cBo beat\u201d (think \u201cWillie and the Hand Jive\u201d of \u201cBo Diddley\u201d).<\/p>\n<p>Mathur&#8217;s soaring vocal harmonies and acoustic-centered rock tunes sometimes suggest the late &#8217;70s work of Al Stewart, but Mathur makes a point of mixing in a dizzying variety of directions. \u201cGrooving in Paris (All My Choices)\u201d has elements of spy-movie soundtrack music, Pariisan caf\u00e9 jazz and stomping, singalong rock, all in under four minutes. And the album&#8217;s title track spins out an simple yet infectious lea guitar line that suggests the windswept sonic vistas of some of Dire Straits&#8217; best work.<\/p>\n<p>Listeners seeking a cohesive, consistent-sounding set of tunes might be a bit perplexed by the wide musical net cast on <i>Little Boat<\/i> by Ajay Mathur. One moment it&#8217;s pub rock; the next it&#8217;s something else entirely. But those open to variety will find much to appreciate on this album.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the years just before punk broke in the UK, there was a musical scene bubbling under that would exert an influence on punk while (quietly) providing a bridge between [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14210,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,49,62,65],"tags":[3352],"class_list":["post-14209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-indie","category-new-release","category-rawk","category-review","tag-ajay-mathur","cat-39-id","cat-49-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14209"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14211,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14209\/revisions\/14211"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}