REVIEW: Gay Dad, Leisure Noise (London)
- Don Share
Cliff Jones was such a fan of Pink Floyd that he assembled and published a book called "Another Brick in the Wall" which explained every song the band was known to have come up with; the work of a true rock obsessive. When he assembled a band called Gay Dad, there was reason to believe that someone so fixated on musical details could make one hell of a record. The name raised eyebrows, and so did the logo for the band, a kind of walking restroom-sign silhouette that looked amazingly like...a gay dad. A few pre-album singles made an impression in Jones's native England, but by the time the long-awaited album arrived, the British music press, far more influential than that in the US, turned on him, the kiss of commercial death: Gay Dad became the object of ridicule. All this before anyone on our shores had a chance to check out their music, which has gotten zero attention, good or bad, here. So, you maybe ask, how is it?
Well, Cliff and company were smart enough to tone down the Floyd references (except for a few sly seagulls), and they have a sound of their own: chunky guitars, sweet wistful vocals and swirling synth touches, all very British-sounding. Touched by an appealing but low-key "Life In a Northern Town"-kind of nostalgia, it adds up to very little, unfortunately. Leisure Noise is earnest, pleasant, sometimes catchy, but also turgid and sometimes unsalvageably lame, a kind of whimper at the end of the millennium.
"Dimstar," which kicks things off, is acceptably soaring and reflective, while "Joy" burbles and pounds and clangs infectiously. But "Oh Jim," despite late-70's Stones guitar, is burdened with some Badfinger-lite lyrics: "Oh, Jim / Can't you feel the pain I'm in?" "My Son Mystic" sounds like Indigo Girls would if they had a guy in there someplace and is a tell-me-about-your-life-and-I'll-do-likewise kinda tune. The self-explanatory "Black Ghost" is gentle and swooshing, like a less long-winded Porcupine Tree, if you've heard them. Alas, even legendary early-Bowie producer Tony Visconti can't save the fey "To Earth With Love," which contains -- beware -- strung-together lyrical allusions to '70s bands. "Dateline" amusingly hammers nails into this musical coffin with rhymes like "started feeling blue" in "1972," "started feeling fine" in "1989," and, get this, "1999," the "end of modern time!" "Pathfinder" goes so far (or short) as to beg someone to "kiss me like you still remember me" -- huh? "Different Kind of Blue" ain't Miles Davis, and the closer, "Jesus Christ," ain't Alex Chilton. "Jesus Christ made a good man outta me," sing Gay Dad. You want to warm to this, not least because it isn't cynical at all, and that is sincerely refreshing. Yet the '70s nostalgia here is so pallid that I wish this music had been more marked by what it alludes to -- say a good dose of Slade or Sweet; instead, it's mostly a missed opportunity, except to prove that Britpop is finally, irrevecably over.
