And For Our Next Trick. The Tearaways

Sometimes it is so easy to draw a line through time. It's 2023, connect it to 1996 and 1966 and you have a straight line from The Tearaways to Fountains of Wayne and The Beatles. Listen to the opening song of And For Our Next Trick, 'Are You Effing Kissing Me' and you know why it's so easy. The champions league of pop is right in front of your ears.

The only difference being that The Tearaways are no longer young men. The veterans comes up with pop perfection leaning heavily on the days of old, while using every trick in the book available to them. To great success, as this album is a pop joy to listen to.

It starts with the dual vocal delivery of John “Fin” Finseth and Greg Brallier. Their singing is so good. They find every harmony there is to find in a vocal melody. Their voices blend and go apart to create different moods all over the album. They sing together as they were put upon this world with one purpose only: sing together. And they do, I promise you.

With a lead guitarist who is not into huge solo's taking the attention away from the singing but all about embellishing each song with fine notes, strong accents and little melodies the band has another strong feature. David Hekhouse is a modest lead guitarist who has everything down in a Peter Buck and Roger McGuinn style of guitar playing.

In Clem Burke the band has its most famous member. The Blondie drummer is a band member since 1981. On organ you hear Heartbreaker Benmont Tench, who has a considerable contribution to And For Our Next Trick.

Promo photo

The question is how far can this record go. It is totally anachronistic. It's sound coming straight out of the past as if a time machine made a mistake and put it out last week instead of 1966 or so. My take is The Tearaways have made this record for people like me, who can really enjoy music from decades ago, caught in originals in this decade. Yes, I know, it has all been done before and in some cases better like in The Beatles hear-a-like 'Goodnight Nurse', ('Dr. Robert', anyone) but still it sounds so good. That is the fun and the joy of listening to And For Our Next Trick. Above all, this album is well written and made with veteran producer Ed Stasium. Not since 'Catch-All', Swag's album from 2001, have I heard a band having this much fun with the past as The Tearaways have here.

Now, I was under the impression that the band with And For Our Next Trick released its first record, but then I found on Wikipedia it is around since the 1980s. The lemma gives no discography. The band's Bandcamp page only gives this record and the single 'Charlie, Keith, Ringo', that can be found on this blog in a review as well. The band's own website provides the answer. This is the sixth album and first with British label Dirty Water Records.

Wout de Natris

You can listen to and order And For Our Next Trick here:

https://thetearawaysmusic.bandcamp.com/album/and-for-our-next-trick