{"id":28043,"date":"2024-08-27T05:30:15","date_gmt":"2024-08-27T09:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=28043"},"modified":"2024-08-27T16:09:23","modified_gmt":"2024-08-27T20:09:23","slug":"album-review-the-black-watch-weird-rooms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/27\/album-review-the-black-watch-weird-rooms\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: The Black Watch \u2013 Weird Rooms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-28044\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/black_watch_weird_rooms.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/black_watch_weird_rooms.jpg 350w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/black_watch_weird_rooms-300x300.jpg 300w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/black_watch_weird_rooms-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>Hard as I try, I simply can\u2019t keep up. John Andrew Fredrick isn\u2019t only a fine songwriter and musician; he\u2019s a staggeringly prolific one. Limiting the discussion to only releases fro The Black Watch from 2020 onward, there have been no less than three EPs and six albums. The latest among those is <i>Weird Rooms<\/i>. The lineup of the ever-changing group at present is Fredrick plus multi-instrumentalist and string arranger Misha Bullock, singer-musician Chandler Fredrick (John\u2019s son) and backing vocalist Sara Mincavage-Bullock (Misha\u2019s spouse).<\/p>\n<p>And while it is indeed something of a challenge to digest the steady stream of music that flows form Fredrick, it\u2019s well worth the effort. Weird Rooms is, we\u2019re told, a concept LP of sorts. But as with any good conceptual work, the individual pieces of music must stand on their own as discrete pieces. And they do: \u201cMyrmidion\u201d feels a bit like \u201cDear Prudence\u201d period Beatles crossed with Robyn Hitchcock, with a dollop of Paisley Underground for good measure. \u201cMiles and Miles\u201d offers shimmering feedback and a haunting, somnolent and shoegazey melody. \u201cGobbledegook\u201d amps up the vibe, suggesting janglepop but somehow doing so without, er, jangle.<\/p>\n<p>The interstitial tracks scattered throughout the disc aim for a <i>The Who Sell Out<\/i> feel, but they\u2019re so short as to flutter by without much notice. Instead, it\u2019s tunes like the title track that engage the listener and stick in the memory.<\/p>\n<p>The aforementioned shoegaze character informs a great deal of the music on <i>Weird Rooms<\/i>. But it\u2019s delivered in a way that leverages the strong melodicism at the core of Fredrick\u2019s writing. The result is an album that washes over the listener but leaves them with actual catchy tunes to recall. The melancholy of \u201cYou\u2019ll Get Over It\u201d and \u201cWould You Were Here\u201d evokes a grey cloudy day with mist on the windows, albeit a day still worth experiencing. Sara Mincavage-Bullock\u2019s sweet vocal harmonies recall prime-era Prefab Sprout.<\/p>\n<p>The spaghetti western textures of \u201cFruit Stripe Gum\u201d offer up a stylistic left turn to close the album, but it\u2019s an enjoyable ride. The trumpet and marimba are nice touches as well, suggesting an indie rethink of Herb Alpert and his pals. The gonzo guitar lead in the song\u2019s second half is as unexpected as the track itself, and ultimately offers an intriguing end to an endlessly engaging album.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hard as I try, I simply can\u2019t keep up. John Andrew Fredrick isn\u2019t only a fine songwriter and musician; he\u2019s a staggeringly prolific one. Limiting the discussion to only releases [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28044,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,49,62,65],"tags":[3921],"class_list":["post-28043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-indie","category-new-release","category-rawk","category-review","tag-the-black-watch","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\/28043","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=28043"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28073,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28043\/revisions\/28073"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}