Back in 2007, I was working at Sony Music and living in Austin, Texas. Sony was signing UK bands left and right looking to cash in on the continued Britpop movement riding high in the US.
The problem was that many of the A&R folks at Sony thought that just because a band was huge in the UK, they would undoubtedly share similar success in the US. That was the farthest from the truth. Many of the UK bands didn’t get a proper promotional push in the US from their labels, and I can attest to that when a brilliant little record called The Trick to Life showed up in my promo allotment. I’d never heard of the band before, and I thought the name was terrible, but none of that mattered once I gave this disc a spin.
The debut record from the UK by way of Indiana band The Hoosiers was a stellar piece of work, and it was chock full of big hooks, slick production, and potential hits. The only problem was, what’s the genre? How do you sell this one? Hell, how do you even describe it? It was somewhere between the genius of ELO and Supertramp, mixed with a bit of Jellyfish and Hot Hot Heat.
This genre-bending mashup would become both a blessing and a curse and ultimately leave the band without a label but with an increasingly dedicated fanbase even after being voted by the NME as the worst band of the year. How in the fuck that happens is beyond me, then again it’s just another example of how clueless critics can shift a band’s perception by making it a cool thing to hate an incredibly talented band.
Either way, I never got to see these guys live, so I was beside myself to hear that they would be releasing a Greatest Hits album with a UK tour to follow. This was it, my chance to see if they could pull off this pop genius in a live setting. I’m happy to report that the answer is a resounding, yes! “Worried about Ray,” “Cops and Robbers,” “Money to Be Made,” “The Trick to Life,” and of course “Goodbye, Mr. A” all sounded top-notch. They even had a horn section thanks to Old Dirty Brasstards who opened the evening and continued with the band throughout the night.
The first two albums made up the bulk of the set and rightfully so, yet as much as I love this band and those two albums, the set was treading dangerously close to Maroon 5 territory, meaning that the pop-ness of the later records almost overshadowed the sound that made this band so unique. Throw in a few covers, including The Weekend’s “Can’t Feel My Face,” and you now have a band that is in full-fledged pop mode. Not that it’s a terrible thing—they’re quite good at it—but it does take away from the ’70s sound that turned me onto the band initially.
The Greatest Hits record is available now, and interestingly enough, they re-recorded the tracks from the first album (I’m guessing that they couldn’t get the rights from the label). Either way, they sound spot on, if not slightly refined. It’s a brilliant collection, and I hope they consider releasing this one on vinyl.
On another note, frontman Irvin Sparkles has a new project called White Tail Falls that just released their debut EP. It’s a departure from the upbeat pop-rock of The Hoosiers, but not too far off from the band’s ballads. I’m slowly digging into it, and the songs are quite good. He’s playing a few gigs soon in London at the end of the month that I’ll likely be at—if the fucking Coronavirus doesn’t cancel all of my upcoming plans.
