The Pretty Things - Balboa Island (repost)

The Pretty Things - Balboa Island  - 2007

By Daryl Easlea  from BBC

You have to hand it to the Pretty Things. If trophies were distributed for tenacity alone, their cabinet would be overflowing. The original hellraisers, the group were peers of the Stones (guitarist Dick Taylor was the Rolling Stones' original bassist) and influenced David Bowie and many others.

Recorded on aged analogue equipment, their 11th studio album, Balboa Island is probably the best record you're going to hear from artists 40 years into their career. Although its budgets may be considerably smaller than some of their remaining peers, the album's ambitions are suitably widescreen. Lead vocalist and lynchpin Phil May (the man of whom Bowie once wrote 'is God') could really milk his role as time-ravaged troubadour (say, like on "Livin' In My Skin"), but he stays just the right side of cliché throughout.

READ MORE

01. The Beat Goes On
02. Livin' In My Skin
03. Buried Alive
04. Blues for Robert Johnson
05. Mimi
06. Pretty Beat
07. The Ballad of Hollis Brown
08. In The Beginning
09. Feel Like Goin' Home

10. Freedom Song
11. Dearly Beloved
12. All Light Up
13. Balboa Island

Phil May - Vocals
Dick Taylor - Guitar, Banjo
Frank Holland - Acoustic & Lead Guitar, Vocals
John Povey - Jeyboards, Harp, Vocals
Wally Waller - Bass, Vocals
Skip Alan - Drums & Percussion
Mark St John ancient Trixon - Drums, Vocals

With

Scarlett Wrench (lots of great vocals & a capella)
James Cheetham (piano & organ on "Robert Johnson")
Rupert Cobb (trumpet)
Duncan Taylor-Jones (extra vocals on "Dearly Beloved")


+@320