Saturday People - The Saturday People

  by Tommy Gunnarsson

published: 2 / 9 / 2003

Label: Foxyboy
Format: CD

intro

Strong second album from Zombies-influenced American psych-pop the Saturday People, which pulls off several surprises

When I first heard of this American band, everybody talked about how much they sounded like the Zombies, the great 60’s psych-pop group. So, naturally I became a bit interested, but never really bothered to look them up, except for a few MP3’s downloaded from various websites. Now I have finally got around to listening to this, their new 8-track album, and I must say that the people who compared them to the Zombies are quite right. That said, I was quite shocked to hear the opening track, 'Conditional Tense'. It sounded more like Prefab Sprout at the time of 'From Langley Park To Memphis', with keyboards and a slick, radio-friendly sound! Not quite what I expected, I must say. But it’s still a good tune, and with the second song, the minute-long 'Preamble', we are back to the heavy 60’s influences. Although, they manage to walk onto a side path again on the fourth track, 'No Photos Exist', when they sound like Magnetic Fields on heavy bossanova drugs. Well, maybe that was overdoing it a bit, but it sounds quite different from the other material presented here. They also get a bit of vocal help from the First Lady of Indiepop, Pam Berry. Actually, the members of The Saturday People are not young kids either. According to their website, they have played with bands like Glo-Worm, The Lily’s, Boyracer, Black Tambourine, St Christopher… not a bad list, eh? When first looking at the sleeve for this record you get the feeling there are 8 tracks included here. Well, you’re wrong. Sure, there are only 8 songs listed, among them two remixes of songs from their debut album, also called 'Saturday People' from last year, but when you pop the record into your CD-player, you’ll see that there are in fact 14 songs. But the ones not listed are not very good. It’s mostly weird sounds and excerpts from the “normal” songs.

Track Listing:-