Those with a keen ear for underground pop music will already be aware of The 1957 Tail-Fin Fiasco. The Essex based musical duo featuring vocalists/multi instrumentalists Malcolm Moore and David Myers first appeared on the power pop scene with their ‘Private Jet Flashback’ album in 2013, and armed with a quirky sense of humour and a boundless love of Steely Dan, they quickly marked themselves out as champions of a retro style. Although further releases occasionally included a few rockier moments alongside weird nods to tangos and lounge music, the band’s love of all things brilliantly kitschy held firm.
Tag Archives: retro
INDONESIAN JUNK – Living In A Nightmare
Since their debut album appeared in 2016, Milwaukee’s Indonesian Junk have remained quite prolific. Following that release they cranked out a new record every year – each one better than the previous – up until the release of ‘Spiderbites’ in 2019. Although still raw, ‘Spiderbites’ contained many of the band’s best songs to date; the CBGB’s inspired garage punk sound they’d been slowly cultivating reached full maturity, and they could legitimately claim to be true successors to bands like New York Dolls and the Dead Boys.
Prior to its release in March 2021, their fourth album proper (not counting the EPs and the excellent rarities comp ‘A Life of Crimes’) attracted a bit of an early buzz among the band and label’s followers. People seemed keen for a strong follow up, but more than that, the promise of a couple of guests immediately seemed to set the album in a position of strength. …And indeed, the lead single, ‘Type of A Girl’ (used wisely to open the album itself) confirmed most people’s hunches that – despite some wobbly beginnings – Indonesian Junk were in top form and had approached the new record much in the same way as ‘Spiderbites’ and that ‘Living In A Nightmare’ would be an album big on hooks.
CHEZ KANE – Chez Kane
On her debut disc for Frontiers Records, British singer Chez Kane is absolutely unafraid of delivering some very retro material. With the help of Crazy Lixx guitarist Danny Rexon, she reawakens the classic sounds of 80s AOR, drawing influence from songwriters like Jeff Paris and Diane Warren, along with the sounds of Vixen, Lita Ford and Robin Beck to create a brilliant album that seems absolutely loaded with nostalgia without being lumbered with a bunch of easy cover tunes. There’s plenty about the album’s crisp sound and relentless stabbing keys that might even make you believe you’d stumbled across a lost recording from 1989. If you’re a fan of classic AOR, this is obviously a very good thing indeed.
Although Frontiers Records are very clearly pushing Kane with equally retro sleeve art and marketing her as “singing eye candy” much in the way Lita Ford and Fiona had been back in ’88, she deserves so much better, especially during the more enlightened climate at the time of release in 2021. It’s best to ignore the cheap looking sleeve as much as possible and head straight into the tunes. …And armed with ten chorus driven bangers across a vinyl friendly forty five minutes, Kane really doesn’t disappoint.
THE CHEAP CASSETTES – See Her In Action! EP
Everything about The Cheap Cassettes’ first full length album ‘All Anxious, All The Time’ did, indeed, scream “cheap”. It’s ten songs sounded like old demos and the choice of artwork – complete with basic Microsoft Word style font – really didn’t give the strongest first impression. However, if you were able to make it past those cosmetic flaws, some of the songs suggested a retro band with a big heart and an even bigger gift for delivering a hook.
Their ‘Kiss The Ass of My Heart’ EP – delivered some four years later, via the Rum Bar Records label – presented a marked improvement. The core of the material came with a much better audio quality and in the case of the title track, it almost felt as if you were eavesdropping on a long lost demo from The Knack. From such rough beginnings, it was more than clear that The Cheap Cassettes were a band with great promise…and indeed, the EP gained some really positive – and well deserved – press from various power pop blogs around the globe.
Listen to the new single from the mighty 1957 Tail-Fin Fiasco
Following last year’s album ‘The Harvard Tango’, those retro pop kings The 1957 Tail-Fin Fiasco have returned with new music. A non-album single, ‘J Is For Genius’ takes a side step from their usual Steely Dan obsessions and gives listeners a dose of retro pop in a vastly different style.