Album Review: The Sweet Things - "Brown Leather"

 

And so the Nite Songs odyssey officially comes full circle. You may remember that when we first started this webzine off way back in July 2020, the first album we reviewed was the Sweet Things' debut In Borrowed Shoes On Borrowed Time and now, just under two years later, the follow-up is out and in our review pile. So let's dive in, shall we?

Those who remember those early days of this 'zine might recall that these New York rockers' debut was a prime slice of Dolls-meets-Stones swagger and it's clear from when the title track (which owes a definite nod to imperial years Quireboys) kicks in that it's very much business as usual on this one although countrified former single Ya Know I Don't Mind shows a gentler side to their output before Ride It Home kicks things back up a gear, kind of like the Dolls covering the Stones' Rip This Joint.

Keep It Movin' reminds me of great lost '80s Sunset Strip rockers the Joneses with its glammed up take on the cowpunk formula before Ain't Got Enough Room (In My Heart) pretty much urges you to dig out the lighter and wave it aloft, a big epic ballad which reminds me of a countrified version of the old Throbs classic Honey Child - it could've been an overblown mess but the Sweet Things keep it just low key enough to make it an album highlight.

Cold Feet goes full on into a glorious halfway house between the Faces and Give Out But Don't Give Up era Primal Scream with its tinkling piano and wall of horns. And a killer chorus hook just to make sure before Familiar Face drags us into full-on Hank Williams style honky tonk country with its wistful bar room tale. It Hurts Me Too swaps the saloon for the bayou with some swaggering harmonica soaked blues rock before Mentholated Blues cracks out a prime slice of Dollsy swagger leaving the gentle countrified blues of Problematic Life and the lonesome steel guitar led instrumental Ride The River to send this one home.

Brown Leather does what every great second album should by taking the best bits of the Sweet Things' debut and building on them to create something genuinely great. It reminds me a bit of cult garage rock legends the Chesterfield Kings in that it's unafraid of taking pretty much any sort of type of music on but brings it all back home with a sweet way with a tune and hook that'll have you cueing it straight up for another listen once you've finished. Highly recommended.

NITE SONGS RATING: 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑 (9/10)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Garbage Days Revisited #74: Silverfish - "Organ Fan" (1992)

Image
  "You can't kill what you're afraid of...are you afraid of me?"  - Silverfish  - Big Bad Baby Pig Squeal I guess the obvious place to have written something on Silverfish would have been in one of the very early Sounds From The Junkshop but I'm ashamed to admit that they were a band who, while I was sort of aware of their presence at the time, I wouldn't really properly discover until well after they'd split.  I can remember the band name from the occasions they'd pop up on the Indie Top 10 on the ITV Chart Show but it was only when their singer Lesley Rankine cropped up as a guest vocalist on Therapy? 's Troublegum album (on Lunacy Booth  and Femtex ) that I decided to try and investigate their output in a bit more detail. Only to find they'd literally split up a few months before. Bugger. Silverfish hailed from Camden in the pre-Britpop days back when it was still the grimy scuzzy end of North London and the sort of place tourists would act
Read more

Garbage Days Revisited #29: The Quireboys - "Homewreckers And Heartbreakers" (2008)

Image
  "I played my hand in a rock 'n' roll band, it was my ace, my jack and my king/I rolled the dice to see what Lady Luck would bring, salvation or sin..."  - The Quireboys  - One For The Road In a way, I'm quite surprised I haven't covered the Quireboys either on Sounds From The Junkshop or here on Garbage Days Revisited yet. Unlike a lot of bands who were slung in with the "hair metal" tag in the late '80s and early '90s, I actually was  aware of the band when they had their brief flirtation with chart success around the turn of that decade and had a couple of their singles in my collection - Hey You  on a Now compilation (which sounds incredibly incongruous all these years later!) and There She Goes Again/Misled  on cassette single. For whatever reason though, they never quite became the firm favourites of mine that their fellow Soho dwelling glam rockers the Dogs D'Amour did. I'm not quite sure why - I think I just thought the Dogs
Read more

Garbage Days Revisited #90: Soho Roses - "The Third And Final Insult" (1989)

Image
  "If you won't love me then I'll find someone who will!"  - Soho Roses  - So Alone The Soho Roses were a classic case of right band, wrong time. If they'd broken on to the scene in the last few years then they'd have had a ready made audience on the 21st century power pop scene and probably be regulars at Some Weird Sin and similar club nights in the Smoke. The reality? They broke through towards the tail end of the '80s and got lumped in with the dying embers of the Soho glam scene, leaving behind one sadly underappreciated album and a few EP's before self-combusting. In a way, I sort of see the Roses as a British version of Enuff Z'Nuff. Not so much in terms of their sound but more of the fact that they were a group crowbarred in with glam who weren't really a natural fit there and kind of paid the price for it - I've always thought Enuff Z'Nuff sounded more like a Britpop band with flashbomb guitars than a hair metal band. Oh sure,
Read more