When "Crying All The Time" kicks off here on Brilliant Failures, the newest album from The Black Watch, a listener asks yet again: Why the hell isn't this band more well-known? Crashing and lurching forward like some heady mix of Kitchens of Distinction and Strangeways, Here We Come-era Smiths, The Black Watch deliver in a definite fashion. John Andrew Frederick sings on this one a bit like Morrissey, yes, but we're talking the pre-asshole Morrissey, not the current iteration, and the vocals and hooks here remind a listener that smart pop can still work, if done correctly.
The title cut here sounds a bit like Sugar, and "Twisted Thinking" has a faint early Stereolab throb to it, but I think it's safe to say that John might approve of those reference points while reminding that The Black Watch are their own animal. And if he sings like John Cale on "What I Think", one of the highlights here, the band roars around him like, say, The House of Love from 1989, or The Auteurs from 1994. Reviewers like me fall back upon those sorts of comparisons to trumpet how wonderful this band's music is, how easily it can be embraced here in 2020, and how adeptly it injects joy into the ears like that of so many bands and musicians we all grew up on. That's the secret here. John Andrew Frederick makes literate rock but he's not a show-off about it.
In that sense, Brilliant Failures is one of the band's best releases in years, with earlier single "Crying All The Time" here anchoring the first strong half of this one, and flip "One Hundred Million Times Around The Sun" holding down the second. Flashes of The Byrds and The Monochrome Set jostle throughout these numbers, with the instrumental snap of "Red Dwarf Star" sitting nicely next to the languid college rock of "The Personal Statement". The shoegaze wooziness of "Mind You Now" is echoed later by the closer "Technology", a real epic here. While there are guitar-lines in this closing cut that briefly echo those of early Cocteaus records, the overall effect is an elegant one, and yet another in a string of expertly-composed and performed numbers from this band in this century.
Brilliant Failures might get pegged as a rockier album than other Black Watch releases, and I can see that, but it's maybe a more holistic one. John Andrew Frederick makes this look so easy, and it's almost magical how he's able to compose songs that have the same kind of effect on us as that of all the bands we grew up on. Still, this isn't rock-and-roll that's stuck in the past, but compositions which are devoid of ironic detachment, and fully engaged in providing the kind of rush that made alternative music feel genuinely alternative before. Bright in every sense of the word, the brand of tune-age from The Black Watch on Brilliant Failures is invigorating and vital.
Brilliant Failures is out on Friday, March 27 via A Turntable Friend.
More details via The Black Watch Facebook page.
[Photo: The Black Watch Facebook page]