{"id":22542,"date":"2022-02-19T05:30:58","date_gmt":"2022-02-19T10:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=22542"},"modified":"2022-02-18T09:27:19","modified_gmt":"2022-02-18T14:27:19","slug":"album-review-nick-frater-presents-the-rebutles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2022\/02\/19\/album-review-nick-frater-presents-the-rebutles\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Nick Frater Presents The Rebutles"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Rock fans of a certain age know about The Rutles. The legend that lasts a lunchtime, the group was the subject of a mid \u201870s mockumentary called All You Need is Cash<\/i>. The Rutles, of course were a fictitious band, part of the wacky universe that gave us the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band and Monty Python. With the blessing of George Harrison, they made an album of music, dead-on pastiches of Beatles songs. (So dead-on, in fact, that they got sued for their trouble. But that\u2019s another tangent.)<\/p>\n

In the 1990s The Rutles reunited, so to speak, to make Archaeology<\/i>, their answer to the Beatles\u2019 Anthology<\/i>. That was it. Now, well into the 21st<\/sup> century, Nick Frater has taken the meta concept to its next logical level: a tribute to The Rutles.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not as tail-chasing an endeavor as you might think. Frater is a songwriter, musician and producer par excellence, and his deep understanding of the creative, aesthetic and technical elements of Beatles (and Rutles) music is such that he can pull it off. At times, The Rebutles<\/i> sounds more like the Beatles than the prefab four. His McCartney-esque \u201cWhoo!\u201d howls on the waggishly-titled \u201cBaby I\u201dm Amazing\u201d are spot-on.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Lost weekend\u201d is Lennonesque, and while Frater nails the character of John\u2019s voice, he doesn\u2019t sound quite like him. The song is more reminiscent of, say, Badfinger crossed with Tony Hendra (National Lampoon\u2019s \u201cMagical Misery Tour\u201d). Still, impressive stuff.<\/p>\n

Initially, \u201cHah Hah\u201d aims for the rifftastic Revolver<\/i>\/Rubber<\/i> Soul<\/i> era, and it hits the bullseye. Then it moves seamlessly into a style that would fit snugly on Side One of Yellow Submarine<\/i>. And the instrumental \u201cSodor and Gomorrah\u201d pokes good-natured fun at Paul\u2019s more twee tendencies, including use of wooden train whistle.<\/p>\n

No prize for guessing what movie theme is being pastiched in \u201cYou Only Live Once.\u201d The tune also has bits reminiscent of Mason Williams\u2019 \u201cClassical Gas,\u201d but the similarity doesn\u2019t reach the level of outright theft, so he needn\u2019t worry about lawsuits. \u201cWhen We Were Eighteen\u201d answers the (unasked) question, \u201cWhat would it have sounded like had Ringo made the Cloud Nine<\/i> LP? The shortish record wraps up with \u201cThe Last Laugh,\u201d a lovely tune that \u2013 pastiche projets aside \u2013 would fit nicely on any of Frater\u2019s superb albums made under his own name.<\/p>\n

A busman\u2019s holiday for sure, The Rebutles<\/i> is a fun way for listeners to spend a few moments. It\u2019s not technically for sale; instead it\u2019s available as a bonus for those who pick up his essential Earworms<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rock fans of a certain age know about The Rutles. The legend that lasts a lunchtime, the group was the subject of a mid \u201870s mockumentary called All You Need […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22543,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,51,62,65],"tags":[278,3631,1903],"class_list":["post-22542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-release","category-pop","category-rawk","category-review","tag-beatles","tag-nick-frater","tag-rutles","cat-49-id","cat-51-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22542","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=22542"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22544,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22542\/revisions\/22544"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}