You couldn’t swing a dead cat last year without hitting a new Sixties-style power-pop band – Jellyfish, Trip Shakespeare, the Cavedogs, just to name a few. But Jellyfish is happy to be the Yankee equivalent of XTC (revisionism with a touch of wry), Trip Shakespeare adds campy Seventies pretension to the mix, and the Cavedogs sound like an apple-cheeked roots-rock version of mid-Sixties Who. If this major-label follow-up to Failure, their excellent 1988 indie debut, is any indication, however, the Posies really are the Hollies – and Badfinger, and the Move, and the Searchers, all rolled together and reincarnated in their prime. Singer-writers Kenneth Stringfellow and Jonathan Auer have the nasal choirboy vocal sound and classy melodic moves of the Hollies down pat, especially on "Suddenly Mary," which sounds like a golden gasser from some parallel Sixties universe. When they rev up the rhythm and the guitars, as on "My Big Mouth" and "Help Yourself," visions of all manner of fab foursomes, from the Beatles to the Raspberries, Big Star and Cheap Trick, are sure to dance in your head. (RS 595)
DAVID FRICKE