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| bigrubberglove |
Posted - 16/10/2004 : 18:14:51
Well done I must say. The print version has a big picture of Arthur that looks great!
Torben, this would be great to link to on your home page.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/16/arts/music/16zomb.html
October 16, 2004
ROCK REVIEW
'67 Revisited, From Different Directions
By BEN RATLIFF
he Zombies and Love are both 1960's rock bands taking their old music to the stage again. And in each case, the legacy comes down to a single twee masterpiece of 1967.
Those albums - "Odessey and Oracle" by the Zombies and "Forever Changes" by Love - are inversely related. The Zombies' album now sounds like a professional affair under the cover of complexity. The Love album remains obstinately weird beneath a pretty surface. As oldies acts running through what has become a fairly fixed transaction of nostalgia, they performed their duties quite differently in a double bill at Town Hall on Wednesday.
Colin Blunstone and Rod Argent are the singer and keyboardist from the Zombies who, after a number of hesitant live and studio collaborations since 2001, have finally started using the old band name again. Mr. Blunstone is the primary source for the Zombies' nostalgic goose bumps: his breathy, patrician voice, shown at its best on songs like "A Rose for Emily" and "Brief Candles," is still clear and strong. Mr. Argent, one of the group's two principal songwriters, stood behind two racks of keyboards and by the end of the night had showed his abilities in rather square ways: interpolating "New York, New York," "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," and his own Chopinesque inventions into an electric piano solo toward the end of the song "Indication."
There were several agendas running here. The pair offered a taste of their new material from an album on Rhino records, "As Far as I Can See," full of well-played, well-adjusted, charmless optimism. They burnished the legend of "Odessey," playing half of its tracks, including its one hit, "Time of the Season." They acknowledged the work of Mr. Argent's subsequent band after the Zombies, Argent, by playing the classic-rock-radio staple "Hold Your Head Up." And with a string quartet, they played "Misty Roses," a striking song from Mr. Blunstone's solo album "One Year," complete with its original arrangement, full of modernist dissonance.
If Mr. Blunstone and Mr. Argent have straight-up talent at their craft, Arthur Lees's qualities are less quantifiable and, in his case, more powerful: urgency and inscrutability. Ten years ago he began collaborating with a young quartet from Los Angeles, Baby Lemonade, and the new version of Love has, at times, three electric guitarists. But Mr. Lee's presence cuts through any volume. Nearing 60, tall and shaven-headed behind dark glasses, he looked much younger, and as he sang he switched between a mild, wispy voice and a megawatt Tom Jones vibrato, interjecting guttural Otis Redding cries.
Playing more than half of his classic album, as well as other songs from his past and present - including a new one called "Rainbow in the Storm" that sounds very much like an outtake from "Forever Changes" - he sang about seeing life passing before his eyes. Quick, violent images and weirdo non sequiturs still brought the listener up short, jolting through the songs' sweet groovy haze. The band played them all with tight gusto.
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