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Album Review
by SashaS
18-10-2001
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More on: Mull Historical Society
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| Mull Historical Society |
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Mull Historical Society: 'Loss'
(Blanco Y Negro/WEA)
Mull Historical Society provide the last exit from the hamburger hell and living by joining dots
Quiet might be the new loud but it is sweeter when it does come with a twist in its tale. That’s where Mull Historical Society excels: this is an album that appears to be on the level of singer-songwriter’s norm right now, all of them too obsessed with the Buckleys, but then it happily deviates. In the process it pushes aside general feeling of no-one actually altering the chords of reality, all being happy to be contemplating in the shadow of the great-late Tim.
Mull Historical Society just laugh in the face of all of it and make music you should take with you if you were to drive through Mojave Desert. From the opening ‘Public Service Announcer’, full of humour of the smirking kind – ‘If this is my public I’m ready for you/If this is my public I’m turning the screw’ goes refrain – to the concluding ‘Paper Houses’ takes one on a journey of sonic invention that we are so often denied.
Songsmith, arranger and producer, Colin MacIntyre, takes the tried and getting-tired formula and infuses it with new life of samples, details, incidental sounds, regal moments, such as angelic chorus in ‘Instead’. Each song is treated individually and not like a package: every single tune has a definite character, every track is as individual as the next mood, cornered in its own ‘issues’. Even then there are different sections to songs, there is change of tempo and setting… This is disarmingly enthusiastic music freely floating in its own creative universe.
Mature pop song is ‘Watching Zanadu’ with its catchy hook and interesting harmonies, echoing drums and ethereal melody awaits in ‘I Tried’, oh – such an aural delight. These are sounds as expression of artistry, these are not pre-fab tunes from some pop-factory, these are stories from life, sounds to soundtrack it.
Irony is well represented in the track named after the band where we are invited to ‘Loosen, loosen your body/Loosen, from your point of view’ before encouraging us to join the MHS ‘… With your point of view.’ We know what you mean, Colin, it’s like common sense, as Dr Johnson remarked, there it is but it is not very common.
Surf to the website and join in; it’s spiritually rewarding to be a fully paid-up member.
8.75/10
SashaS
18-10-2001
Mull Historical Society’s album ‘Loss’ is out now on Blanco Y Negro/WEA
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