There is nothing new under the sun. We all know that. But that doesn’t mean you have to do or make the same things over and over again. And it certainly doesn’t mean music makers have to copy what has gone before. So while it is easy to hear the sonic inspirations that Glasgow’s The Buttons wear proudly on their tie-dyed sleeves, they understand that the art of delving into the past is to channel the same spirit rather than rehash the original sound.
And that is what Medication, the band’s fifth album (and second this year), does so well. And while it is easy to pick up on the paisley-pop moves and jangling psychedelic grooves, the hippy lilt and acid vibes that colour the album in all its kaleidoscopic glory; cleverly, it sounds less like a nod to the past and more like a new chapter in an ongoing story being penned.
To that end, opener ‘Colours’ certainly sounds like the 60s, but it also could have easily fit into the Paisley Underground revivalist movement of the early eighties, the Manchester baggy scene, and perhaps even herald a new, groovy, acid-soaked indie event horizon. Maybe it is the sound of a sixties that didn’t quite exist, a modern take on that much-lauded decade, a revised and extrapolated take buy someone who wasn’t there, man!
Byrdsian jangles abound, never more so than through ‘Dig It Out! (and if that isn’t a song title The Stone Roses should have used, I don’t know what is)’, it is shimmering, arabesque and trippy to perfection. ‘Voodoo’ sounds like the sort of song that The Monkeys might have made if the TV companies had just let them reach their full potential, and ‘Hippy Chick’ has a real ‘She’s A Rainbow’ thing going on.
And I don’t use these older references to suggest The Buttons are going over old ground; rather, you have to cast your mind back a long way to find any suitable reference points.
Nostalgic? Slightly. Inventive? Absolutely. Forward-thinking? Oddly yes, especially when you consider that everything is cyclical; fashions and fads bubble up in every cutting-edge sound the zeitgeist winds blow in. Medication might feel like an echo of the past, but I see it as a portent for the future. Well, you can, but hope.
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