Steve Stoeckel<\/a>\u2019s band to play for the International Pop Overthrow Festival. While those gigs were the highlight of the trip (and among the highlights of my life so far, be it known), taking in live sets from some very, very good acts was close behind. One of those featured Blake Jones & the Trike Shop. I was impressed not only by the group\u2019s stage demeanor and by Jones\u2019 ability to coax actual melodies out of a Theremin \u2013 no easy task, that \u2013 but by the music. The group’s original songs blended pure pop values with a decidedly bent and whimsical mien, a mad-scientist approach to songcraft.<\/p>\nI was sold then and there. And so when And Still\u2026<\/i>, the latest release from the group arrived on my desk, I was quite keen to listen: would they be successful in capturing the mix of mischief and melody in studio recordings?<\/p>\n
The answer came quickly. While \u201cRecord Cover Girl\u201d is a catchy enough opener, just a few seconds into \u201cFascist Bumblebee Winter Formal\u201d it becomes clear that this album delivers on the art-pop promise of live shows. Shades of Martin Denny crossed with John Barry are folded into a strangely alluring tune. Best not to try to make sense of the lyrics; the tune washes over the listener in a delightfully off-kilter way.<\/p>\n
And Still\u2026<\/i> is filled with songlets, pieces that clock in at under two minutes; there are five such tracks on the album. But each one is fully developed, and could \u2013 had Jones wished \u2013 have been extended to standard pop song length. It\u2019s a testament to his compositional and arrangement gifts that he has enough top quality material to fill an album this way. Music-nerdy topics like used record stores and hype stickers make Jones\u2019 slightly skewed point of view plain, but it\u2019s a POV that indie-oriented listeners are likely to share and\/or appreciate.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Queen is Dead\u201d is very 1967ish, in the best way; it hints at both Sgt. Pepper<\/em> and Pet Sounds<\/em>. Of course Jones isn\u2019t the first to draw from those sources, but he does it skillfully here. And yes, the Theremin makes a front-and-center appearance on \u201cYou Put Theremin on My Hype Sticker,\u201d with a feel closer to Spaghetti Western soundtracks than to, say, a \u201850s sci-fi flick. Listeners who like their pop quirky and adventurous won\u2019t want to miss And Still\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oftentimes, the listener\u2019s path into an artist\u2019s work goes like this: they hear about new music, listen to those recordings, develop greater interest, and then maybe get the opportunity to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28085,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,49,51,65],"tags":[5503,5504],"class_list":["post-28084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-indie","category-new-release","category-pop","category-review","tag-blake-jones","tag-blake-jones-the-trike-shop","cat-39-id","cat-49-id","cat-51-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28084","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=28084"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28094,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28084\/revisions\/28094"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Oftentimes, the listener\u2019s path into an artist\u2019s work goes like this: they hear about new music, listen to those recordings, develop greater interest, and then maybe get the opportunity to see the artist live onstage. But it doesn\u2019t always work that way.<\/p>\n