‘You can think what you like…there’s nothing to hide’ (Good Things About To Happen)
Misplaced apostropohe intentional, grammar freaks! Return of the Slack: Sam Marsh was drummer/vocalist for acclaimed mid-nineties Suffolk post-grunge band Jacob’s Mouse, and after shelving The Machismo’s songs for a long while, now presents the project’s debut, Good Things About To Happen.
Sounds positively upbeat, right? And it is, the title track coming across as Beck sipping pineapple juice with Steve Malkmus and The Jicks, while G-Love & Special Sauce and Gomez scratch themselves in hammocks. It’s a lazy, hazy, lovely song, groovy in its best possible useage, and designed for being turned up full blast and wandering around your place in your underwear to with a cigar and Baileys on the rocks, before the promise of a stellar night out.
The rest of the ten tracks are equally balmy, relaxed, and intent on sharing your summer with you. High point ‘Jilt’ comes on like something from In Rainbows with added baggy, with all the liquid grace in sturm und drang that that implies, also reverberating echoes of Roy Harper and ‘Seventeen Seconds’-era Cure. ‘Loosen Up’ is Captain Beefheart walking down a Brixton thoroughfare in high summer, and ‘When You Know It’s Real’ rivals latter-day Flaming Lips in the how-fried-is-this indescribabilty stakes.
Musically speaking, Marsh is quite the master of rhythm, drums shuffling or propelling in flurry and slink on every track, and the bass locks in beguilingly funky throughout. Good things about to happen? Absolutely, and august is the month for it.
[Rating:3.5]
