One time Augie March front man Glenn Richards has gone solo. Why? “Why an album at all?” he, quite rightly, retorts preemptively in the associated press release. There is nothing special about Richards now going under his own moniker. It is still a collection of his songs with a different band helping him out.
With the help of Dan Luscombe and Mike Noga from The Drones on guitar and drums, Glenn’s brother Chris Richards on guitar and Ben Bourke from Ned Colette on bass, Richards takes listeners on a journey that doesn’t stretch too far from the musical territory he claimed as his own in Augie March.
Richards writes the kind of music that can be put on in the background. It doesn’t require a lot of attention to appreciate, it just lends itself to your ears so easily you’ll like it without even realising.
Clocking in just shy of an hour, this album does become kind of draining, particularly if you are giving it the attention it doesn’t need, or based on how low the vocals are in the mix, deserve. It begins to feel like a marathon towards the end.
Interesting moments include the soft horns of ‘Painted By Numbers’ and ‘They Hate Us’ (which is much nicer than the name lets on), the stompin’ country opener ‘Torpor and Spleen’ and ‘The Love Zoo’ which is as close to straight out pop as this album gets and the gloomy ‘Harsh Critic’, which is about as dark as the album gets, but the album has difficulty in being truly exciting.
It is full of good moments. Really good moments in fact! The kind of good moments that will do nicely in the background. The kind of album you could give your mother for mother’s day and she’ll feel like she has a “cool” edge over her friends who listen to Michael Buble. The kind of album that Augie March fans are familiar with and will love.
All of the ingredients are there. I feel like I should love this album - after all, there is nothing wrong with it as such - but the lack of passion is like a huge stop sign on the emotional road to ‘Glimjack’. I am just about as apathetic about this album as one can be.
Track listing:
1. Torpor and Spleen
2. Long Pigs
3. Old Love
4. Apple Of My Eye
5. Painter By Numbers
6. Unflappable Man
7. The Drive
8. Turn On You
9. Glimjack Muttering
10. Barfly Prometheus
11. They Hate Us
12. The Love Zoo
13. South Of Heaven
14. Harsh Critic
15. Mengele In Brazil
Follow the author Tim Cashmere on Twitter.
