With a title for calling for sanity in crazy times, this latest LP by the multi-instrumental New York brothers Brian and Michael D’Addario is a pristine release of beautiful new songs inspired by a 60s rock and pop sound, echoing artists from the Hollies to Byrds, mid-career Beatles, Beach Boys and the Who. The classic, jangly guitars and wistful delivery of Michael’s opening title track sets the tone, a golden, upbeat, texture that offsets love songs of heartbreak and longing throughout the release. Brian’s 2 or 3, is decorated with Beach Boys-style vocal harmonies and a swooning wall of sound Californian flavour with added flute. Nothin’ But You is gorgeously power pop overdub harmonies and progressions reminiscent of And Your Bird Can Sing, and while seven of the tracks on this album are solely the brothers, this one features Eva Chambers, the rest with Reza Matin on drums with Danny Ayala on bass on Bring You Down and You’re Still My Girl. They helped us finally capture that vital live sound on record.”Gather Round feels like a jaunty McCartney number of the 1967 period with joyous orchestrations with brass. The single I Just Can’t Get Over Losing You is a classic jangly Twigs recreation of the Byrds/Hollies with a beautiful new melody, while Fire and Gold strum, drum and sing out echoes of 60s Who with a dash of psychedelia. And thus it continues. The delicate closing ballad Mean To Me, one Brian Wilson would enjoy. Bring You Down, a protest song against ‘the man’, is a lively rockabilly twister with an age-old, but also topical issue: “I’ve been working so hard every minute of the doggone day / And my rent’s gone up and the boss won’t raise my pay,” the words inspired by the plight of Amazon factory workers trying to form a union for rights: “They're gonna take my job and give it to a metal machine/ If I don't make some money soon, I don't know where I'm bound / All I know is that the man was made just to bring you down.” And so it continues, all the way to the psychedelic Your True Enemy (“Search everywhere to find the true / Your true enemy/ Somewhere you know, it's really you”) classy and classic sounds, new yet old, as if the brother have just stepped out of musical time machine. While the style may be well-trodden, there’s no faulting the high quality of performance and the warm, resonant, wonderfully timeless songwriting of these formidably talented siblings. Out on Captured Tracks.
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