Paul Messis - Case Closed

by Malcolm Carter

published: 29 / 7 / 2013

Label: State Records
Format: LP

Angry but brilliant vinyl-only second album from young West Sussex-based singer-songwriter Paul Messis, who, while taking all his influences from the 60’s, rather them simply recreating them has put his own fresh vision on the era

Review

For those who actually lived through it, this current obsession to recreate the music and style of times long past is difficult to understand in some ways. How can someone genuinely feel nostalgic for a past that was never personally real? It wasn’t just the sounds made nor the clothes on your back, but the events of the time did so much to shape the music. And the world is a very different place now… Hailing from West Sussex, young Paul Messis, who has already been involved in a number of releases under different names and on various labels, certainly looks like a face from the sixties and his music reflects this. When you wear your influences as obviously as Messis does, there is always the risk that the ‘heard it all before’ feeling is going to creep in while listening to the music. It happens, of course, that once in a while one of the new breed actually injects new life into old sounds which does make you sit up and listen and appreciate that here is an artist who is actually adding something new rather than just recycling the past. Messis is one such artist. ‘Case Closed’ is the second album that Messis has released under his own name. Eleven of the dozen songs were written by Messis (the only cover is ‘No Use in Trying’) and right from the opening song, ‘I Hate the World around Me’ a couple of things are immediately apparent. Messis is clearly, on this album at least, a very angry young man, and he is currently one of the best at recreating the garage-punk sounds of the mid-sixties so expertly that ‘Case Closed’ could have been promoted as being some long-lost unheard classic and few would have raised objections. But Messis breaks out of the garage and takes us on a surprisingly exciting and rewarding journey on ‘Case Closed’. Messis doesn’t just show his sixties obsession on ‘Case Closed’; that album we always wished the Jasmine Minks would make, you know, the one that would have twelve slightly different versions of ‘Cold Heart’ on it would be one way of describing ‘Case Closed’. There are many times when ‘C86’ comes to mind during these thirty minutes. Then you get the impression that Messis has tried to create his own condensed version of that Rhino book set ‘Where the Action is (Los Angeles Nuggets)’ as he covers almost all the musical styles displayed over those four discs. At other times Messis conjures up visions of Roger McGuinn (the opening to ‘A Matter of Opinion’ for example), but for the most part ‘Case Closed’ sounds like the album the Seeds would have made had Sky Saxon not abandoned the snotty garage punk of that bands first two albums and gone all flower power for ‘Future’. In many ways ‘Case Closed’ slots in nicely between ‘A Web of Sound’ and ‘Future’; it’s a belated, and subtler, stepping-stone of the Seeds transition from garage punks to fully bloomed flower children. It really is that good. There are shades of the Who and the Kinks littered throughout the album too. With his little vignettes of British life, Messis could eventually turn out to be a match for Ray Davies. Although Messis is obviously venting his rage on some of these songs, there are moments where he shows a more sensitive and mature side. ‘Sad How A Love Fades Away’ is one song where Messis displays his tender side, his bruised vocals wringing every last ounce of emotion in very line. So yes, it’s all been heard before but Messis is no fool. He has injected the right amount of his own sound, his own vision into each and every one of these songs to make them more than mere recreations. The fact that Messis has taken the various musical progressions made during the sixties and seventies and incorporated them all into his sound so successfully is one of the things that allows him his own deserved space. ‘Case Closed’ is not unique, it’s not totally original and it’s certainly nothing new but it is so bloody good.

Track Listing:-

1 I Hate The World Around Me
2 A Matter Of Opinion
3 Happy This Way
4 The Tables Have Turned
5 Nickels And Dimes
6 Sad How A Love Fades Away
7 Further From Yesterday
8 (Don't Wanna Be) Scene Or Herd
9 No Use In Trying
10 Sowing Seeds
11 It Doesn't Matter To Me
12 Goodbye