It takes a certain amount of chutzpah for an artist to release a "best of" career overview on the same day that a new album comes out, and then include cuts from the new record on the compilation. But with the music of The Black Watch, one can believe that a new song could be an instant classic, and worthy of compiling on a "greatest hits" album. John Andrew Frederick is enough of a classicist in many ways to justify what I was describing above, so let's cut The Black Watch leader some slack on this point, huh? Magic Johnson, the new album, drops on Friday, as does the new compilation, 31 Years of Obscurity: The Best of The Black Watch.
Magic Johnson sees Frederick favor an approach that features lots of guitars, such that the best cuts here, like lead single "Get Me Out of Echo Park", sound a bit like stuff from The Chameleons and Psychedelic Furs. "Arcane Constraints" is elegant and nearly a goth number, echoes of The Mission here, but Frederick is not really interested in affecting a pose that routine. Instead, he leads this group through paces that should feel familiar to anyone who listened to college radio in the Eighties or Nineties. And so, to acknowledge that "Mad" sounds a tiny bit like Kitchens of Distinction or The Wild Swans, for example, isn't to cast doubts on Frederick's skills but, rather, to indicate that he's taking inspiration yet again from some pretty great earlier artists. His lyrics are just literate enough to not be saddled as too clever, which is to be applauded. John is likely smart enough to let his wits take center-stage, but he's also aware that the melody or hook should be driving things here. So, wisely, he rarely pauses as would certain other artists to raise an eyebrow at a listener as a clever line rolls by. And that's why tunes like "Eustacia's Dream" and "Darling" charm as much through the guitar-effects at work here, as they do for the words John Andrew Frederick is singing. This edition of Magic Johnson contains The Paper Boats EP on it and that's further reason to recommend this one.
The 22 songs on 31 Years of Obscurity: The Best of The Black Watch are all really great, and, yeah, some of them just showed up fresh from the album I reviewed up above. I'm not going to write about those twice but will, instead, highlight songs like "Georgette, Georgette" and "Terrific", tunes that are big and whose hooks positively chime. Elsewhere, "The Tennis Playing Poet Roethke Said" is absolutely glorious, proof that John Andrew Frederick is the anti-Luke Haines, or at least the Yank Neil Hannon. This is chamber pop that rides forward on a neat little gallop such that one wants to pull in references here like John Adams and not just The Divine Comedy. Similarly, "Dear Anne" and "Christopher Smart (1722-1771)" seem as much in debt to The Clientele as they are to, say, Belle and Sebastian or Village Green-era Kinks. John Andrew Frederick on numbers like these is using The Black Watch to pursue a muse that's uniquely American, despite all those Brit points of inspiration, and his work is fully in the tradition of that done by Van Dyke Parks years earlier, even if it owes huge debts to more obvious pop groups such as The Left Banke. At times here, like on "Beautiful" and "Like in the Movies", we get reminders that John Andrew Frederick was capable (and likely remains so) of offering up tunes that are straightforward and catchy. 31 Years of Obscurity: The Best of The Black Watch lets a listener stroll between this kind of material that's college rock in style, and the numbers that are more stately and complex. And this compilation reminds yet again what a treasure this guy is, with a back-catalog that's assuredly solid and rich.
Magic Johnson and 31 Years of Obscurity: The Best of The Black Watch are out on Friday via Atom Records.
More details on The Black Watch via the official Facebook page, or the official website of John Andrew Frederick.