Your enjoyment of the new album from The Smashing Times depends on how much you love Television Personalities. Taking displays of inspiration to a new level (and adding in faux accents too), this Baltimore band really serves up the goods here. And given my love of British indie and culture, This Sporting Life is right up my alley. Likely yours too.
"Glorious Tales of Wes" and the title cut seem to also owe debts to Martin Newell and The Move, respectively, though there's a lot of each in all the grooves here. The sharper "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" punches a bit harder, as befits a song named after a real classic of the kitchen sink genre. The choppy guitars are all C86 and after, with the vocals playfully insouciant. Elsewhere, "Where is Rowan Morrison" is a good deal more pleasant than Woodward's fate in The Wicker Man (1973), the film which provides that line, while "Void About Town" is smart too. "She was Dancing Alone in the Rain" is another highlight here for me, the chiming guitars charting a course not unlike early efforts from The Clientele, themselves inspired by likely the same bands that inform so much here for this Charm City lot.
Very much an experiment in style, This Sporting Life successfully ressurects TVP stuff. The band has the chops to make this all more than just play-acting, and the tunes themselves are very strong. Etched with the same sort of kicky nostalgia that informs lots of The Cleaners from Venus material, this album is a whole lot of fun. Fool your friends and tell them this is a lost gem from the Sixties or mid-Eighties; Don't tell anyone that English pop was conjured up under the Domino Sugar sign.
This Sporting Life by The Smashing Times is out via Perennial Death and K Records this week. Details below.
[Photo: The Smashing Times Bandcamp]