{"id":22895,"date":"2022-05-06T05:30:16","date_gmt":"2022-05-06T09:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=22895"},"modified":"2026-08-21T11:37:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T15:37:17","slug":"album-review-scott-mccarl-play-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2022\/05\/06\/album-review-scott-mccarl-play-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Scott McCarl — Play On"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Thought I’d give readers a HEADS UP on this new release. (I’m here all week, folks. Tip your server.)<\/p><\/div>\n

I am sure we can agree as to the wonderfulness that is The Raspberries\u2019 catalog. \u201cGo All the Way\u201d is pop perfection, taking the \u201cdon\u2019t bore us; get to the chorus\u201d aesthetic to the extreme in its quest for rock\u2019n\u2019roll transcendence. And though they released only four albums in their \u201870s run, what a great set of records they are.<\/p>\n

As the band\u2019s original lineup began to fray \u2013 due to the dominance of one member in particular \u2013 the group lost its rhythm section. Undaunted, the aforementioned member (whose name I shall not type) brought in new musicians to fill the vacated spaces. On bass came one Scott McCarl. And far from taking on the role of do-as-you\u2019re-told sideman, McCarl co-wrote four of the album\u2019s songs and composed another (\u201cRose Colored Glasses\u201d) on his own. He also sang lead on several of the album\u2019s tracks. His contributions would end up being a significant part of what made the group\u2019s fourth studio album Starting Over<\/i> the creative success it was.<\/p>\n

Alas, the band broke up after that record\u2019s release. Not counting subsequent reunions and live sets<\/a>, Starting Over<\/i> would be the final word from The Raspberries. The group went out on such a high note that it\u2019s fair to wonder what might have happened had they remained together to make a fifth LP.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll never know. But one possibility — and a tantalizing one at that \u2013 is that a theoretical fifth Raspberries album might have sounded a whole lot like Scott McCarl\u2019s solo release Play On<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Taking its title from McCarl\u2019s most well-known co-write on Starting Over<\/i>, the album was released in 1997, some 23 years after the Raspberries\u2019 studio swan song. And it\u2019s every bit the creative equal of that record. Even without the involvement of the afore(non)mentioned \u2018Berries member, Play On<\/i> is a bouquet of pop delights.<\/p>\n

Most of the ten songs on McCarl\u2019s solo debut were recorded in the mid 1990s. But as was so popular in that era, the CD was stuffed with an additional seven bonus tracks. Those songs date from earlier sessions, primarily circa 1981 but in one notable case dating back to 1970, several years before<\/em> McCarl was involved in the Raspberries.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s that 1970 cut, \u201cI Hope\u201d that reveals something quite important about this singer\/songwriter\/multi-instrumentalist. While upon his joining the Raspberries, there might have been some thought that perhaps he was a hired hand, McCarl clearly already had a style of his own, fully formed. And as \u201cI Hope\u201d makes plain, that style was remarkably similar to what The Raspberries were doing. A full two years before \u201cGo All the Way\u201d hit the airwaves, Scott McCarl was turning out a pop jangle classic of his own.<\/p>\n

Sure, \u201cI Hope\u201d is impossibly Beatlesque; its immortal melody, soaring backing vocals and warmly familiar Rickenbacker- and Gretsch-flavored guitar tones will take listeners back to the banks of the Mersey River circa 1964. But if you\u2019d never heard it and someone played it for you, telling you it was proto-Raspberries (or The Choir<\/a>, perhaps), you\u2019d readily believe \u2018em.<\/p>\n

And \u201cI Hope\u201d is but one song, one among a raft of crystalline pop melodies. I can assert that Play On<\/em> really should have been a big hit, but as fans of the powerpop style have long since figured out, the world doesn\u2019t work that way. Released on a small label, the record didn\u2019t make a commercial splash.<\/p>\n

Fast forward a quarter-century. Now we find ourselves with a new album from Scott McCarl, again titled Play On<\/em>. Is it a reissue? No, not quite: four of the album\u2019s ten core tracks have been dropped, as have four of the seven \u201cbonus\u201d recordings. In their place come some \u201cnew\u201d archival recordings and a pair of new (2021) songs.<\/p>\n

Remarkably, other than a few instrumental flourishes, the tracks on this newly reconfigured Play On<\/i> \u2013 variously recorded in 1970, 1981, 1995-6 and 2021 \u2013 all hang together as a cohesive whole. McCarl\u2019s compositional style and arrangement ideas have been remarkably consistent, and uniformly superb. His Beatles fixation is front and center on songs like \u201cI Think About You\u201d (from \u201881). The vocals and bass are McCartneyesque, and the lead guitar solo sounds like solo-era George Harrison.<\/p>\n

Occasionally, McCarl\u2019s melodies have an unnervingly familiar character: one of the new tracks, \u201cDoin\u2019 it Right\u201d is perilously close to \u201cSave the Last Dance for Me.\u201d And a 1996 recording featuring The Rubinoos, \u201cIn Love Without a Girl\u201d sounds exactly like what you\u2019d expect: a cross between McCarl\u2019s old group and the Bay Area pop heroes.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Corrected cover art that’s now circulating<\/p><\/div>\n

But in these cases, familiarity breeds not contempt but fulsome praise. Thirteen songs with nary a dud among them, Play On<\/i> really does sound like the Great Lost Raspberries Record.<\/p>\n

Okay\u2026 with those plaudits made plain, I shall move on briefly to a few mild criticisms and reservations. While the packaging of this CD release from Liberation Hall helpfully provides track information (year of recording, personnel) for most but not all of the tracks, nowhere is the listener given any indication as to why the album has been significantly re-jiggered from its original 1997 track listing.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Original cover graphics that — while trying too hard — are more appealing than the new cover.<\/p><\/div>\n

Bizarrely, the original album\u2019s cover art has been abandoned in favor of a strangely generic cover shot. (They could have just used the old stadium photo and simply done away with the too-on-the-nose \u201cex Raspberries\u201d and \u201cpower pop\u201d proclamations plastered across the cover.) And for this new cover, some laughably ham-fisted Photoshopping has been employed: McCarl\u2019s head has clearly<\/i> been flown in from another photo and appended to his body; it\u2019s far too large for the torso and is just weird enough that I can\u2019t bear to look at it for more than a few seconds. Unforced error, that, though I should note that some digital reproductions of this new cover art seem to have corrected this problem (see example).<\/p>\n

In the end, of course, none of this takes away from the scintillating brilliance of this album, one recommended in the most enthusiastic terms to lovers of swoonworthy melodies. And get this: Liberation Hall has plans for a vinyl release of this record, slated for later this year. That’ll be one to get.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am sure we can agree as to the wonderfulness that is The Raspberries\u2019 catalog. \u201cGo All the Way\u201d is pop perfection, taking the \u201cdon\u2019t bore us; get to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22896,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,51,55,62,64,65],"tags":[3177,4826],"class_list":["post-22895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-compilation","category-pop","category-powerpop","category-rawk","category-reissue","category-review","tag-raspberries","tag-scott-mccarl","cat-19-id","cat-51-id","cat-55-id","cat-62-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22895","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=22895"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32264,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22895\/revisions\/32264"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}