{"id":19166,"date":"2020-07-23T05:30:22","date_gmt":"2020-07-23T09:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=19166"},"modified":"2020-07-23T11:45:08","modified_gmt":"2020-07-23T15:45:08","slug":"album-review-spygenius-man-on-the-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2020\/07\/23\/album-review-spygenius-man-on-the-sea\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Spygenius \u2013 Man on the Sea"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-19167\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/spygenius_mots.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/spygenius_mots.jpg 350w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/spygenius_mots-300x300.jpg 300w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/spygenius_mots-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>One observation made about The Beatles when they hit America is that they sang without thick Liverpudlian (Scouse) accents; they keys to their success were clearly myriad, but that may have been one of them. It was only when groups like The Kinks (to name one) began to achieve some success that the deep Britishness began to be heard on this side of the Atlantic.<\/p>\n<p>In subsequent years, beloved artists like Robyn Hitchcock have made no attempt to dial back their accent (or, from a certain perspective, their lack of one). And American ears have long since attuned to it; note the success of Oasis, to name another.<\/p>\n<p>All of which paved the way for a wonderful \u2013 yet distinctly British \u2013 group like Spygenius to find receptive ears in the States. And well they should, because as showcased on <i>Man on the Sea<\/i>, they\u2019re a group of considerable creativity and appeal.<\/p>\n<p>High-energy melodic rock (powerpop, if you must) is in ample supply; witness the opening track, \u201cAnother True Story.\u201d But Spygenius is no one-dimensional outfit. As early as the second track (\u201cAlbion\u201d) the Canterbury group has shifted gears, delivering a lovely melody with enough barbed-wire texture to take the tune to another level.<\/p>\n<p>Seventeen songs is a lot of material; when an artist stuffs that much music onto an album, it\u2019s fair to approach it with skepticism: are they poor editors who simply dump everything out there, GbV- style? There\u2019s no need for such guardedness where Spygenius is concerned; <i>Man on the Sea<\/i> doesn\u2019t have any weak tracks. In fact, the album has the character of a best-of collection from a band you just didn\u2019t know about until now.<\/p>\n<p>Jangling pop, ambitious art-pop, Who-like punch, heavenly vocal harmonies, subtly psychedelic flourishes and a strong sense of melody are Spygenius\u2019 stock in trade, and they\u2019re all served up in great supply on <i>Man on the Sea<\/i>. Imagine a less quirky XTC or a slightly more idiosyncratic Squeeze, and you\u2019ll begin to approach the character of Spygenius.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One observation made about The Beatles when they hit America is that they sang without thick Liverpudlian (Scouse) accents; they keys to their success were clearly myriad, but that may [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19167,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,51,57,62,65,73],"tags":[4161,4255],"class_list":["post-19166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-release","category-pop","category-psych","category-rawk","category-review","category-vinyl","tag-big-stir-records","tag-spygenius","cat-49-id","cat-51-id","cat-57-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","cat-73-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19166","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=19166"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19168,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19166\/revisions\/19168"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}