FREDDIE STEADY 5

Tex-Pop

(STEADY BOY) www.steadyboyrecords.com

A Texas legend and, in times past, an embellishment to London’s pub rock scene, Freddie Krc has awesome pedigree. Aside from drumming with Jerry Jeff Walker and Roky Erickson he’s led the wondrous Explosives, Texas’s foremost power pop band, and The Shakin’ Apostles, a majestic paisley pop concoction which seemed like a triumphant meeting of The Charlatans (the real ones) and Green On Red.

Unsurprisingly a great fan of the 60s British Invasion groups along with the American bands who tried to emulate them. His Freddie Steady 5 is, in part, a tribute to their music. 2006’s Freddie Steady Go! was a collection of covers of classic Texan songs like ‘She’s About A Mover’. Tex-Pop is mainly originals in the same vogue, with more than a nod as well to the 70s Stiff crowd.

There’s hooks-a-plenty and lashings of Augie Meyers-tinged keyboards. ‘Happiest Boy In Town’ is a bright, jangling Beatles/Byrds melange, while ‘If She Were Mine’ is like classic early Costello. ‘What’s So Hard About Love’ invokes the shades of the Brinsleys, while P. F. Sloan’s ‘Halloween Mary’ gets the full ’65 folk-rock treatment with cracking harmonica from Cam King.

Anglophile tendencies get full rein in ‘London’, and while it might be an ‘England Swings’ for our days it’s whole-hearted and delightful. And finally, to Freddie’s eternal credit, there’s an airing for ’Tin Whistle & A Wooden Drum’ from that greatest lost songwriter of them all, Jimmy Silva.