Album Review: Muck And The Mires - “Greetings From Muckingham Palace”

 

Some albums just suffer from landing on the review desk at precisely the wrong moment. Boston's Muck & The Mires are signed to garage rock specialists Dirty Water records (who also count the likes of Lucy & The Rats, King Salami & The Cumberland Three and MFC Chicken among their roster), and as you might expect, they're another group owing a big debt in their sound to the original '60s garage rock explosion.

The trouble is, as you'll know if you've been reading this site a lot in the last few weeks, we seem to have had quite a lot of albums like this going through our review pile in recent months and there've been quite a few absolute diamonds in there such as the recent efforts from the Empty Hearts, the Dirty Strangers and Baby Shakes. And it's not that there's anything massively wrong with Greetings From Muckingham Palace, it's just that it's found itself among some pretty fierce competition with the company it's had to keep on this site in recent weeks and unfortunately it's just come up a bit short.

There's plenty of energy and tightness in here from Muck & The Mires as evidenced on the likes of This Time I Know I'm Right, Sunny Feeling and the duck-walking Don't Start Running Away. The trouble is that they don't really add anything new to what's already a pretty well-worn formula and it just leaves this album feeling like it lacks a bit of a spark compared to some of its competitors as evidenced on the schmaltzy Too Soon To Fall In Love and the generic Mint Condition and Messed Up Mary.

Like I say, I think Muck & The Mires have maybe just been a bit unlucky with their timing here - there's nothing to say that if Greetings From Muckingham Palace hadn't landed in a month where I've already listened to a lot of bands of this genre then I might have been a bit better disposed to it. As it is though, while it's a perfectly reasonable collection of fast 'n' tight garage rock, there are better efforts out there to spend your money on unfortunately. Sorry guys.

Bandcamp link

NITE SONGS RATING: 🌓🌓🌓🌓🌓🌓🌑🌑🌑🌑 (6/10)

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