Sool - Sool

  by John Clarkson

published: 17 / 12 / 2001

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Review

Originally conceived as a one off "fun" project, Sool features in its line-up Boston producer and musician, Pete Weiss, and Neal Spaulding and Kevin Quinn, two out of three of the former members of eighties underground psychedelic-pop band The Dead Monkeys. Sool, in which Spaulding and Quinn play guitars while Weiss appears on drums and all three members take turns at singing duties, was first formed in 1998 when Weiss, a long-term friend and fan, invited the two other musicians into his self-owned Zippah Studios for a Dead Monkeys studio reunion. As the band's original drummer, Ken O' Keefe, who was living in Japan at the time, was unable to attend, Weiss volunteered to fill in on drums. With his presence changing the creative energies of the band, and new songs being written specially for the occasion, Sool was born. Sool's eponymous debut album, which was recorded over an intense three day period, has, as the band cheekily describe it, spent the last two years in "post-production", but has now at last been released on local Massachusetts label, Stereorrific Recordings. It is an immensely likeable record which combines sardonic and satirical humour with a wide range of sixties and early seventies rock influences. Bearing most direct comparision perhaps, as a result, with The Mothers of Inventions' 'We're Only In It for the Money' and The Monkees' 'Head', its eclecticism, however, makes it fleetingly reminiscent of several of the other of the major bands of those eras also. 'Turpentine', a rumbling blues rock number, is like a long lost Grand Funk Railroad track with its rough-and-ready power chords, and has Spaulding, his voice raw and sounding like he has been gargling with the paint remover, extolling its virtues. Cleaning dirty dishes and taking it instead of Alka Seltzer as a cure for a hangover are just two of the unusual suggestions he has for its usage. 'Laughing Under a Tree' in complete contrast has Quinn starting to go out with a "new girl" while remaining awkwardly still very much in love with his previous girlfriend, and, unabashedly sentimental in tone and with swooning vocal harmonies, recollects The Righteous Brothers. The mystical and deliberately nonsensical 'Lamentia', which is Eastern in feel, however, nods directly to George Harrison, while 'Free Mason', one of the last tunes on the album and the only song written in unison by the entire band, is a thrashy garage rock number, which sounds like a tune which The Sonics or The Primitives could have recorded. The album's oddest track 'Ramekin of Pemmican' meanwhile has Weiss, backed by cheesy synthesiser and squeaky sound effects, singing through a voice distorter and making up obscure rhyming couplets. Interspersed amongst the main tunes are several shorter unlisted tracks,most of which last a matter of seconds. Some of these have been taken from obscure, otherwise forgotten recordings, while others have been written by the band and their family and friends. Many act as preludes to the bigger songs, and all help to further enhance the humour of the album . A German yodeller appears at one point. There is a throwback to Weiss's first album from 1996 ,'The Astounding World of Tomorrow's Modern Hi-Fi Audio', in which that album's narrator is briefly resurrected to babble inananely about the sounds and music that the future will bring us, but this time up-dates his message to include Sool. Elsewhere a DJ in a phone-in is heckled by a listener for tickets for a J. Geils Band show which he clearly doesn't have, and the album is closed with the sound of cuckoo clocks and an ancient and scratched recording of a song from the twenties or thirties. The great pleasure of this record , as with all the trio's previous recordings, is that, while it gently pokes fun at the music and sounds of the sixties and seventies, it has also been composed with much love and affection for its targets. For those who are already acquainted with The Dead Monkeys and the various tape albums that they made in the eighties, or with Weiss and his first solo album and the two CDs that he subsequently made with his now defunct group The Rock Band, this record builds on from where those others left of and is an essential purchase. For others who have not been fortunate enough to hear these, 'Sool' acts as perfect introduction to all three musicians' blending of musical versatility with comedy, and is very much worth seeking out. Sool have recently played their first two shows supporting Weiss's regular new band The Weisstronauts in Boston with Neal Spaulding who, lives six hundred miles away in North Carolina, appearing singing and playing his guitar by video satellite link. With another non-satellite show planned for North Carolina in December, and hopes eventually for another studio album,this project seems set to last and last.

Track Listing:-

1 (untitled) - (Hidden Track)
2 Same Old Melody
3 Turpentine
4 (untitled) - (Hidden Track)
5 Laughing Under A Tree
6 (untitled) - (Hidden Track)
7 Ramekin Of Pemmican
8 Trying Not To Give It All Away
9 (untitled) - (Hidden Track)
10 Lamentia
11 (untitled) - (Hidden Track)
12 Noodle Man
13 (untitled) - (Hidden Track)
14 Sweet Baby Jesus
15 (untitled) - (Hidden Track)
16 Novicado
17 (untitled) - (Hidden Track)
18 Bubba Mickey
19 (untitled) - (Hidden Track)
20 Korina Moderne
21 (untitled) - (Hidden Track)
22 Free Mason
23 (untitled) - (Hidden Track)
24 Unloved Kitty
25 (untitled) - (Hidden Track)
26 (untitled) - (Hidden Track)
27 (untitled) - (Hidden Track)