Trashcan Sinatras - In The Music
Review by Jack Foley
IN THE five years since we last heard a full album from Trashcan Sinatras, things have been looking up.
After more than two decades in the business the guys behind the 1990’s GO! Discs albums Cake, I’ve Seen Everything, A Happy Pocket and 2004’s Weightlifting have decided to throw caution to the wind and get happy.
The result is new album In The Music, which is full of typically relaxed harmonies and observations on love and life. The arrangements were sorted in a back room in the South Side of Glasgow over the summer of 2007, and then recorded in New York over a crisp, cold winter in 2007/8.
At the heart of it, however, is a studio process that’s new for the boys – of relying on instinct, and leaving the received structure of songwriting and recording behind.
The result is an amiable, if none too lasting, collection of songs that are fine for leaving you in an uplifted mood, or if you’re feeling particularly romantic.
Highlights include opening two tracks People and Easy On The Eye, both optimistic observations on the nature of love, with the latter in particular benefiting from some great guitar work.
Prisons, meanwhile, also contains some nice retro guitar work that even has a George Harrison style quality, while album closer I Wish You’d Met Her is a heartfelt and deeply swoonsome offering that pretty much epitomises the feel-good vibe felt throughout.
If there’s a criticism, it’s that a lot of the material does sound a little samey, while the album struggles to put forward a really killer track that would rise above dinner party background music, or a lazy Sunday afternoon listen.
That shouldn’t necessarily disuade you, however, as this is the sound of a band having fun and translating it to the listener well.
Download picks: People, Easy On The Eye, Prisons, I Wish You’d Met Her
Track listing: