FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1999. All Rights Reserved
| CD Review by Aubrey McInnis SATURNHEAD • Vancouver-based Terry Miles (singer/songwriter) wrote and recorded all the songs on this album during the summer of 1998. • For fans of ’60s pop or recent nods to it from The Lilys, Kleenex Girl Wonder, Wolfie, Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Olivia Tremor Control and Belle & Sebastian. There’s no denying it – this is the kind of music that would have been playing in your head as a kid skipping down the sidewalk from the corner store with a melting root beer rocket popsicle in your eight-year-old hand. Saturnhead is unabashed pop that’s all about going droopy eyed and getting goofy around crushes. You can’t feel it happening, but eventually someone else looks into your face and laughs their butt off and it finally clicks in your preoccupied mind that you’ve been caught in the middle of a recurring episode of wishful thinking. Saturnhead, California is all that captured on analog. Terry Miles has been caught with both hands in the cookie jar – whistles blowing, lights flashing – and he’s smiling, the goofy smile that says he’s okay with everyone knowing that he’s an incurable romantic and gets suckered into love as often as possible. The fruit (runts) of Miles’s labour is a Lovin’ Spoonful of unconventional, harmonic retro chic pop. It’s sometimes lackadaisical and sometimes sprightly, but is sprinkled with plenty of string arrangements, dripping with tra-la-las, and has a quick bonus lesson on how to make a cowbell sound sweet. Sugar flows from this album like the constant current of Willy Wonka’s chocolate stream. Although everyone may have grown up from skipping on the sidewalk to lounging in splendour on the small patch of grass outside the entrance of your high rise apartment – like it or love it – Saturnhead has perfectly illustrated the innocent crush. So this is what a blush sounds like. 4/5 |
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