Jeffrey Dean Foster

Million Star Hotel

Angel Skull ASR –0818

Million Star Hotel is like a multi-faced diamond reflecting light into a hall of mirrors. It’s full of shimmers of sound floating phantom-like through the ether, suddenly becoming corporeal, solid, robust, and then as quickly bursting again into slivers and insubstantial after-sounds, then turning into before-sounds again.

A classic pop album from North Carolina, in the lineage of How Men Fail and Travels In The South, that unashamedly mines the tradition, the glories, of the greats. This is a record made by someone who grew up in the 70’s, whose teenage years must have been spent in cars with radios. You can hear late Beach Boys, Neil Young, Marc Bolan, Glam Rock, and you hear of a time when music and romance were inextricably mingled.

Put together over a number of years, as and when locale allowed, it’s a large project and a large album; 14 songs and nearly 70 minutes. They’re all real big songs, full of diversity, adventure, and surprise. Well-made songs of the night illuminated by those million stars but created like sculptures or collages; there’s always something more. Be it atmospherics, distortions or add-ons, there’s always another teasing little sound in the corner.

There are friends here too. Lynn Blakey, recently of Tres Chicas, sings, notably on ‘The Summer Of The Son Of Sam’, Don Dixon and Chris Phillips take brief turns, Mitch Easter plays guitar and steel and helps produce. But it’s Foster’s album and it’s his persona and his strengths that define it. His tender, warm tenor voice is always entrancing. He writes a good and memorable lyric: “bet her heart on a bobtail loser”, “can’t even count on losers anymore”, “you’re on the road but I’m on the street”. He can take classic lines and make them new; we know where titles like ‘Long Gone Sailor’, ‘All I Do Is Dream’, ‘When Will I Be A Man’ come from, and we smile with recognition and it helps us, but it wouldn’t change a thing if we came completely fresh.

The start is gentle. First an ambience, a little breaking whisper that gradually grows into the tale of a ‘Lily Of The Highway’. The major motifs are all here gathered; girls, cars, growth, loss. And its questing and its variance are the promise of what’s to follow. A promise absolutely redeemed almost immediately by ‘The Summer Of The Son Of Sam’. That summer was 1977, when Elvis and Skynyrd both fell to earth. Over six minutes the song rises from a quiet meditative night with cicadas, lit only by a dying star, into an epic.

Memorable moments persist; there’s a splendid twist in ‘Little Priest’ as it begins like glam rock, with echoes of T.Rex, and becomes a California surf ballad. ‘Don’t Listen To Me’ with its After The Gold Rush piano, might be channelling Danny Whitton. ‘Long Gone Sailor’ seems at least part-written under the influence of Holland, and if ‘Lost In My Own Town’ doesn’t allude to Big Star then I’m a Dutchman.

Yet every second of this remarkable album cries out to be listened to, experienced, and cherished. Everything here is always doing its part; it’s down to the careful listener to find and explore that everything. For these songs will never let that listener down and never stale. Always they’ll inspire, and always they’ll reward.

www.jeffreydeanfoster.com

Tim Lee

Concrete Dog

Fundamental Records 18 AD


Wow! I knew I was going to love this record when I heard ‘Half-Life’ on Tim’s MySpace page. In fact I put it on my own personal page and it’s still there today. ‘Cos ‘Half-Life’ is one of those great chiming songs with enough of a raucous edge to snatch you by the throat. In that way it’s like a Steve Wynn or a Chris Stamey song, in fact like any number of Tim’s contemporaries from those halcyon 80’s days when his old band the Windbreakers were glorious contemporaries of the Dream Syndicate and the dBs. When the fusing of the guitar sound of Neil and Crazy Horse with that of the Byrds turning out lashings of magic southern power pop.

This is Tim’s third album since he started recording again about five years ago and it’s probably the most full-on. He and his band, comprising wife Susan, Don Coffey, and Greg Horne, have been playing out and they’ve road-tested and honed the sound. The title track kicks off the album, greeting you with a massive guitar sound akin to Rich Hopkins, and from then on feet barely touch the ground. Next comes the ringing intro leading into the more melodic ‘Half-Life’, and then the rhythmic ‘Alone Together’. ‘Get Up. Get Up’ is another standout, sounding like the Redland Palomino Co. playing Southend pub rock. There’s also a couple of Windbreakers-like tunes in ‘Black & White To Me’ and ‘Ever Before’.

Most of the album’s produced by Tim and Greg Horne and recorded between Mississippi and Tennessee. But there’s one track recorded with Craig Schumacher’s assistance down at Wavelab in Tucson. It’s a drifter’s song, ‘Greyhound From Jackson’, with two short but sweet guitar breaks that imbue it with a loneliness yet more desolate than the lyric. A highlight but from a record jammed full of highlights.

Tim Lee's website

(from BoB#70)