{"id":15173,"date":"2018-09-13T05:30:55","date_gmt":"2018-09-13T09:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=15173"},"modified":"2018-10-02T11:31:51","modified_gmt":"2018-10-02T15:31:51","slug":"album-review-brother-reverend-the-tables-turn-too-often","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2018\/09\/13\/album-review-brother-reverend-the-tables-turn-too-often\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Brother Reverend &#8212; The Tables Turn Too Often"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-15163\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/brother_reverend.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/brother_reverend.jpg 350w, https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/brother_reverend-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/brother_reverend-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>I think the publicist \u2013 however well-meaning he may be \u2013 was having a bit of fun when writing the one-sheet that accompanies promo copies of <i>The Tables Turn Too Often<\/i>. Sure, it\u2019s useful to provide potential reviewers with some musical signposts, occasionally dropping of names in a RIYL (\u201cpromo-speak for \u201creview if you like&#8230;\u201d) kind of way. But this here one-sheet mentions Ray Davies, Bob Dylan, Curtis Mayfield, the Beach Boys, the Funk Brothers, Echo &amp; the Bunnymen, Louis Ferdinance C\u00e9line (huh?), William Burroughs, Phil Spector (yikes and <i>yikes<\/i>), John Cassavettes, the Bee Gees, Malcolm X, Sergio Leone, Link Wray and Desmond Dekker, he of \u201cthe Israelite.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and George Jones, the Ventures, the Velvet Underground and Diana Ross. Of course.<\/p>\n<p>Sure, most of that is one grand-scale piss-take. But what about the music itself?<\/p>\n<p>Brother Reverend is a Brooklyn-based indie duo, Keith Xenos and Fletcher Liegerot. The music on the record is a kind of creaky, cracked pop with ambitious undertones, aiming for a lo-fi answer to Todd Rundgren\u2019s <i>A Wizard\/A True Star<\/i>. It\u2019s filled with gritty, streetwise playing applied to pop confection melodies. Really good stuff.<\/p>\n<p>The album\u2019s eclecticism is a poke in the eye to the listener who find themselves saying, \u201cHey, I really like this track.\u201d The second cut, \u201cFamily Housing,\u201d rocks melodically. But the tune that follows, \u201cAnything New\u201d is a high lonesome, three-quarter time country and western weeper with keening pedal steel. And it\u2019s played straight (I think). And \u201cCarry the Difference\u201d has Wilsonian glockenspiel, patented Hal Blaine drum patterns and a ginchy melody full of Who-like power chords <i>and<\/i> more pedal steel \u2026 plus a lead vocal that may remind listeners of Lou Reed. Farther along, \u201cPlot Twist\u201d sounds like Neil Young and Crazy Horse.<\/p>\n<p>Weird and sophisticated, but in a wholly unpretentious fashion, <i>The Tables Turn Too Often<\/i> is a delightful collection, a testament to the deep well of talent that exists on the indie fringes of the pop music landscape. A reviewer such as myself starts by reading the over-the-top one-sheet hype, and ends by listening to the album, shrugging good-naturedly and admitting, \u201cWell, <i>yeah<\/i>.\u201d Enthusiastically recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I think the publicist \u2013 however well-meaning he may be \u2013 was having a bit of fun when writing the one-sheet that accompanies promo copies of The Tables Turn Too [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15163,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,49,51,65,73],"tags":[3557],"class_list":["post-15173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-indie","category-new-release","category-pop","category-review","category-vinyl","tag-brother-reverend","cat-39-id","cat-49-id","cat-51-id","cat-65-id","cat-73-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15173"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15339,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15173\/revisions\/15339"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}