Tom Tikka writes great songs. It’s as simple as that. Okay, that isn’t much of a review, but when you get right down to it, that one simple fact overrides any other considerations. It’s the one thing that you can’t fake. Studios are great places for obscuring your shortcomings under gimmicks and gizmos, but if you have the songwriting chops, then all you need to do is gently frame the songs rather than distract from them.
Take “Wrecking Ball,” which opens this, his fourth album: the fact that it sounds like you have been listening to it all your life is not because it is more of the same, but because it is rooted in rock and roll’s classic traditions and defining attitudes. Part unabashed rock energy, part pop accessibility, it is both a timeless sound and, given the state of music today, a timely intervention. That’s how you grab the listeners’ attention from the off.
But, as the next two songs prove, Tikka can dance deftly all across the musical map, turning his hand to whatever sound or style feels the appropriate wrapping for his ideas. “It Was Always You” is a more gentle, mid-paced, and poised piece, and “Denim Never Looked So Good” is a cool piano ballad.
But it is the recent single, “The Day I Found You,” that tells us what a great student of music history Tikka is, a song that blends ’60s pop perhaps as filtered through the ’80s Paisley Underground revivalist sound with love-lorn lyrics and infectious and instantly sing-along-able harmonies. If you aren’t at least tapping your feet by the time the middle eight does its thing, then you are possibly beyond redemption.
“Hand-Me-Down Blues” reminds us that rock music is the younger, more boisterous offspring of blues; “Redondo Beach Werewolves” feels like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers at their most romantic and understated; and “Sacrificing Sins” puts the album to bed via the urgent and energetic, with staccato riffs, slow-burning and spiraling their way up into more anthemic climes.
Most albums have an acceptable amount of filler between the killer. I would say that the filler, for want of a better word, on a Tom Tikka & the Missing Hubcaps album is at such a creative level that most other artists would happily release it as singles. Filler, of course, isn’t really the appropriate word for albums such as Roomful of Strangers”, but I know what I mean.
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