It doesn’t happen often, but from time to time, you are lucky enough to stumble across an artist making music that sounds both like the best of the past and an excellent signpost to where things are, hopefully, headed. And the reason such can span both what has gone before and set the agenda for the future, is because they have managed to capture that special thing, that intangible quality, that x-factor that is the difference between being labeled in one particular era or fashion, sound, or style and having a timeless sound. That is precisely what gets an artist into the rarefied club labeled as classic. Well, given the passage of enough time, it is.
Teas n Seas (I do love a good pun) is the new one from Marc Teamaker and, as he puts it, is a set of “….love songs for my late wife Kathleen, both experienced and imagined. It’s a kind of conversation she and I have on various road trips. She’s gone, but I’m still batting around ideas with her, and it’s like we are writing the songs together”.
Even before the opener, “North Dakota,” is half done, it is clear that we are at an extraordinary crossroads, a place where genres and eras meet, and indeed become subsumed, a place where the sounds of bands as diverse as The Jawhawks and Squeeze are found dancing together and in turn echo out from the heart of the music.
“In and Out of This World” captures something of the same delicate and delicious alt-country/alt-rock that Wilco made their own, subtly yet complex sonic weaves, purposeful and propulsive, and the title track is hushed and hazy, folky and finessed.“Charlotte” feels like one of those songs you have been listening to all your life, a touch of Laurel Canyon, a slice of Richard Thompson’s electric canon and “Pocket of Blue” is a gorgeous summation of all that has gone before to round things off.
I have said this an unexpected number of times this week already, but this is music which goes straight onto my “new favourite band” and “potential record of the year” lists, and the ubiquity with which that has happen in a matter of days must speak volumes about a fight back against the low bar of current music on behalf of fans of discerning music.
