The James Oliver Band - TWANG!

Well, this is fun!  It may not be a whole lot more than that, but who ever said that rock’n’roll needed to be high art?

And rock’n’roll is very much what we have here on the debut album from the James Oliver Band, delivered with buckets of enthusiasm, brio, humour – all that stuff.  Oh yeah, and it’s well-titled, ‘cause Oliver also scatters a shedload of guitar twang around, like confetti at a wedding. 

‘American Cars’ comes hurtling down the highway in rockabilly chuggaboogie guise, with a

James Oliver does some yakkety-yak

reverb-heavy guitar sound that recalls Brian Setzer.  But it’s not, as you might imagine, a paean to black Cadillacs or any of the vintage gas guzzlers of rock’n’roll lore.  Instead it’s about the more modest kinds of automobile to be spied in Oliver’s native South Wales.  But the sound isn’t nearly so prosaic, with Oliver cranking out a wild solo over the stomping beat.

It’s the first in a string of winners that continues with ‘She Was The One’, a slice of neo-Feelgoodism à la ‘Roxette’, on which Billy Lee Williams adds some toots of harp as a complement to Oliver’s scudding guitar solo.  The bridge feels a bit misplaced, but I’ll let ‘em off.  Then there a couple of Big Joe Turner tracks, ‘TV Mama’ and ‘Honey Hush’.  The former features ringing slide guitar and a shiverin’ an’ shakin’ solo from Oliver, though it would be better if the guitar didn’t overwhelm Williams’ piano so much in the mix.  No complaints about ‘Honey Hush’ though – it may not quite have the heft of The Pirates’ version, but it’s satisfyingly muscular, and here as elsewhere Oliver rattles out the vocals with confidence.

‘The Missing Link’ is a surfin’ instrumental with loads of scratchy twangery over a locomotive-like rhythm, that accelerates into a hurtling passage reminiscent of Love Sculpture’s take on ‘Sabre Dance’, before downshifting into a mellower section for variety.  Then ‘Mean Little Mamma’ – not to be confused with the similarly-titled Roy Orbison song – returns to effervescent and witty territory, scampering along with its “mamma mamma mamma” backing vocals, in two minutes’ worth of old-fashioned fun.

In truth the back end of the album tails off a little, but ‘Stay Outta Trouble’ is given some zydeco freshness by accordion from Williams to supplement a slithering slide solo from Oliver, and ‘Clean House’ is also pleasingly different with its changes in tempo around a grinding, lurching chorus, a helter skelter slide riff, and a novel drum and bass break courtesy of Shane Dixon and Darren Beale respectively.  And though I’m not sure the world needs another recording of ‘Misirlou’, Dick Dale’s surf guitar twangeroonie instrumental latterly made famous on Pulp Fiction, it’s still well executed, and is doubtless a hit in a live setting.

James Oliver clearly knows his stuff when it comes to this genre, and goes at it with a will, no doubt benefitting from the input of producer Paul Riley, a man whose CV includes work with old-fashioned rockers like Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe.  Cranking out three-minute nuggets of rock’n’roll escapism to a consistent standard is a notoriously tricky business, but for the most part TWANG! holds its end up pretty well.  And like I said - it’s fun!

TWANG! is released on 22 May by The Last Music Company.