Zoey Van Goey - The Cage Was Unlocked All Along

  by Anthony Middleton

published: 6 / 6 / 2009

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If you are a regular reader of the Pennyblackmusic reviews section, you might remember my recent review of the Butcher Boy album ? You don’t ? Well, to put it shortly, I wrote about the fact that almost every band from Glasgow seems to sound exactly the same (with Belle and Sebastian being the default band here), and now I get the chance to draw that same conclusion all over again. Zoey Van Goey are a Glaswegian trio, made up of two boys and a girl from Canada, Ireland and England, so they’re not really Scottish, but that doesn’t seem to matter here. 'The Cage was Unlocked All Along' is their debut album, following two 7” singles (one of them recorded by, believe it or not, Stuart Murdoch). It impressed me immediately with its sleeve, which has a fantastic painting by Peter Diamond, a painting that stretches all over the booklet. But when it comes to the music, it seems that Zoey van Goey have only chosen a slightly different path than their colleagues, as they sound like The Delgados (a band that was also from Glasgow, by the way) than Belle and Sebastian. That is very clear on the opening track, 'The Best Treasures Stays Buried'. Singer Kim Moore even sounds like Emma Pollock sometimes. A quick look at the biography of the band also reveals that Paul Savage produced their second single. So, the first single was produced by a member of Belle and Sebastian and the second one by a member of the Delgados. Do we see a pattern here ? Apart from the obvious influences, I can also hear a tiny bit of Architecture In Helsinki, especially on the second track, 'We Don’t Have That Kind of Bread'. All in all, this is a pretty good album, with some good songs. I just wish that a Glaswegian pop band could surprise me some time in the future…

Track Listing:-

1 The Best Treasure Stays Buried
2 We Don't Have That Kind Of Bread
3 Sweethearts In Disguise
4 We All Hid In Basements
5 Two White Ghosts
6 Foxtrot Vandals
7 My Persecution Complex
8 Nae Wonder
9 Cotton Covering
10 City Is Exploding

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