Right from the off, as “I Want You” leaps, bops, bounces, rocks and rolls out of the speakers, we are reminded of the potency of great pop music. And if there are plenty of nostalgic flavours coursing through the album’s veins, it isn’t that Blake is just picking and plundering past glories, rather than he is making pop for the modern age, but often echoing that 60’s and 70’s golden age, before the genre became awash with lowest common denomenator sounds, marketing department approved music, and safety in numbers place it is today.
And if that opener has more than a hint of Small Faces about it, never a bad thing, the title track is more challenging to place, a swaying, swaggering slice of blues-infused pop and roll, again as much the product of the here and now as it is reminiscent of what has gone before. Somehow both fresh and familiar, feeling like a song you have been listening to your whole life, yet, somehow also hearing for the first time. Which is as good a definition of a classic track as anything else.
There are also hints of Fleetwood Mac to be found, “Even If You Don’t” echoing the band’s most interesting period, that handful of albums that bridge their original blues sound and the later era of global pop superstardom, go back and check it out, there is some real sonic gems to be found.
“Truth and Lies” shows that Blake can do the growling, foot on the monitor, rock and roll when he chooses, and, by contrast, “You’re Not Broken” is a poised and poignant acoustic-driven, indie-folk piece…until it decides to explode majestically into something heavier!
Flamingo Road is an eclectic but elegant collection, one that indeed nods to better pop times, and a reminder that it is a genre that has always lent itself to big guitars and punchy deliveries, a stark contrast to the shallow, unsatisfying sound that seems to be the norm today.
Some might say these are rock, folk, and indie songs, but that’s the problem with generic labels: they don’t get to the heart of the true nature of a song; they are, at best, just a way for lazy journalists, not me, other lazy journalists, to make their lives easier.
Pop by any other name would sound as sweet. It does, and Flamingo Road is the proof.
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