Tim Lee - No Discretion

  by Malcolm Carter

published: 16 / 1 / 2005

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Okay so let’s get the obvious out of the way first; an album on the Paisley Pop label with a handful of songs produced by the legendary Mitch Easter by Tim Lee who has been turning out classy pop songs for over 20 years now both solo and with the Windbreakers just has to be worth buying. And it is but it also comes as a bit of a surprise; it’s doesn’t come across instantly as we’ve come to expect a Tim Lee album to be. This collection which was recorded over a period of 18 months has a more out and out rock and roll feel to it than any other album Lee has been involved in. Although those power pop roots (a term that Lee is not over fond of apparently but it’s still the best genre to describe Lee’s work to the uninitiated) are still firmly in place over these 13 songs there is a more live and bluesy sound to these songs than we have heard before from Tim Lee. Even the opening song, ‘I Wanna Believe’, despite being one of the Mitch Easter productions, leaves the traditional power pop sound behind for this rockier, back to basics sound. The first few seconds of the second song, ‘Sure Bet’, with its descending guitar lines feels like we are back in familiar territory and with Lee sounding like a cross between the Tom Petty and Roger McGuinn of old one could be forgiven for thinking that the first track was just a minor diversion. But even on this song there is an edge which was missing from Lee’s previous work. The guitars are still chiming, but there is something more going on here this time. It’s louder, and has a rawness to it that was missing before. Even ‘Across These Tracks’, with producer Easter adding pedal steel guitar has this rougher edge to it. The verses may well be full of those jangling guitars with Lee doing his best McGuinn but the chorus sure kicks ass! It’s not all rock ‘n’ roll swagger though, Lee shows his gentler side on the ballads like ‘New Hope’ and ‘The End Of Time’. The only misgiving about this album is that Lee is something of a master at these gentle ballads and that there are so few of them on this album. His vocals are outstanding when he takes a more tender stance and while he certainly has no problems vocally handling the rockier songs the compassion which shows through in Lee’s vocals on these slower songs only makes one wish that maybe at some point he will treat us to a whole album's worth of songs along the lines of ‘New Hope’. But for now Lee has turned out a harder collection of songs than we’ve heard from him before and once the initial surprise has passed it has to be said that the album, which with such a variety of producers and engineers involved could have been lacking continuity, is a fine collection of songs well played, produced and sung and which Lee can be proud of. It’s an album which bears repeated listens and because of the diversity of the producers one that throws up something new with each play. Now I’m going to listen to ‘New Hope’ again and dream of that album of ballads before being blown away again by the guitar solo by Lee in ‘Things Get Broken’.

Track Listing:-

1 I Wanna Believe
2 Sure Bet
3 Across The Tracks
4 Speak Up Girl
5 No Discretion
6 New Hope
7 Things Get Broken
8 Keep Me Down
9 Rain Came Down
10 More Or Less
11 With A Whisper
12 Felt Like...
13 The End Of Time

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