Crumb - Evenings And Weekends

  by Dixie Ernill

published: 28 / 8 / 2005

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Review

Summer’s gone, but nobody told Crumb. The Irish trio bring us ‘Evenings and Weekends’, a debut album dripping with melody and sunshine. Like Teenage Fanclub wearing summer hats on holiday in Florida, Crumb melt exquisite harmonies into lovely jangly guitars to create what, after just one listen, already sounds like a classic. The obvious comparison here is the aforementioned Fanclub, but listening through you can hear sprinklings of REM, Pixies and Dodgy and Witness. Singer Derrick Dalton sounds like an Irish Californian stoner, and his chilled out indie-pop voice is offset excellently by singing drummer Dez Foley. Eamonn Davis, like Hooky, plays his bass like a lead guitar – the main difference being he doesn’t force it to the front of the band’s sound, and together with Dalton’s jangling 12-string we’re treated to a masterclass in indie guitar work. The tunes are all hit singles. A debut album of hit singles. ‘Lights of the City’ is a small town ode to forbidden love, ‘Follow Me Home’ is a Fanclub tribute with a big radio chorus, and ‘Bad Timing’ is a quirky, ever-so-slightly downbeat poem to regret. The second half of the album is a more chilled out affair – if the first five songs were the day trip to the beach, the second five are the spliffs and beers on the veranda watching the sunset over the hills. Album closer ‘No Great Plans’ even ditches the Rickenbacker for an acoustic guitar to back a bittersweet melody telling of taking what life throws at you. Beautiful. Crumb have already released the perfect album, and it’s their first. Unashamedly unfashionable, unrelentlessly shiny and unequivocally indie, ‘Evenings and Weekends’ harks back to a time when indie music in this country wasn’t plastered all over the tabloids every morning, when skinny ties and art degrees didn’t fill the NME every week, when tunes and songs and singers and bands were what we cared about. It’s brilliant, and the perfect tonic to the inevitable winter shitness. Already a classic.

Track Listing:-

1 Lights of the City
2 Fecky the Ninth
3 Follow Me Home
4 Wrecked Or
5 Bad Timing
6 For the Leaving Of...
7 Book of Misunderstanding
8 Marwood
9 My Back Yard
10 No Great Plans