If he wasn't prolific enough, John Andrew Frederick of The Black Watch is here with a reissue of one of the band's best records. From 2011, Led Zeppelin Five is back in a new remastered edition. Sounding wonderfully crisp, the release remains a superb distillation of Frederick's skills.
While recent offerings from The Black Watch have favored a sound that's clearly influenced by shoegaze (though The Black Watch are NOT a shoegaze act), this 2011 album is closer in tone to power-pop of the sort offered up on early albums from The Connells. If that seems an odd comparison point, I think there's a similar vibe here that suggests yet another American was enraptued by the ringing guitars and smart lyrics of The Beatles, from that wonderful period between their first popularity and when they became hippies. "The Stars in the Sky" and "Like in the Movies", for example, are direct, clever, catchy, and wonderful. Frederick's distinctive smarts are here, but his vocals seem slightly more earnest than they've become lately. The elegant "How Much About Love" is, like other things from this guy, a cousin to any number of Luke Haines offerings, but John Andrew Frederick sounds like he means it here. And that's enough, along with the rush of guitars, bass, and drums mid-song, to make this a genuine classic.
And, sure, I can lob these terms at The Black Watch in the hopes that they'd stick but their sound really is one-of-a-kind, isn't it? For any moment here that still feels reminsicent of something you've heard (usually from across the Atlantic), there's another that surprises, a hook that indicates Frederick's joy at playing rock music. He's literate as fuck, yeah, but he's also fronting one of the best, most underrated American rock bands of the last few decades. Led Zeppelin Five, with its Oasis-ish Beatles cover, should remain a nice starting point for anyone new to this act, and a reminder for those of us who are fans already of just how fine Frederick's art is.
Led Zeppelin Five is out tomrrow via Atom Records.
More details on The Black Watch via the Facebook page.