Calling yourself El Goodo is one way of making it absolutely clear what your musical goals are. The Ballad of El Goodo after all is one of the standout tunes from Big Star's hallmark classic debut # 1 Record. It seems fairly evident what lies in store for the listener. Ringing creamy harmonies, plangent melodies, the sound of heartbreak made as unstoppably attractive as it can possibly be.
Zombie the latest album from the Resolven Wales outfit, (their fourth in twenty years) , does all it can to live up to this billing. This is utterly old school Rock and Roll, from start to finish, drawing on Beatles, Beach Boys, Byrds, Burrito Brothers, Badfinger and Big Star in equal helpings and coming up trumps song after song. There only a couple on its thirteen track running list that I wasn't keen on and I can certainly forgive them those.
It's interesting listening to a record that is so definitively rooted in the past as this one. It simply doesn't bother to recast its influences in any respect whatsoever. This is an album that could have come out pretty much any year between 1965 and 1972 yet it's being released in mid 2020.
It would be easy to be dismiss this if the songs weren't almost all so uniformly excellent. You've heard them all before, if you've ever treasured an album from any of the artists listed above. But then again of course you haven't heard them before at all.
Like Teenage Fanclub, Super Furry Animals, The Coral and The Allah Las before them El Goodo make Rock and Roll excavation sound like one of the best ideas there's ever been. I've just listened through to Zombie from start to finish and it's set me up wonderfully for a lazy, laidback Sunday afternoon. It's a glorious record.
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