There's Gonna Be A Storm
(Mercury) 1992

What a fine record.

Imagine yourself working at a coupon promotions company back in those crazy mid-nineties...your only respite from the numbing tedium of McDonalds BOGO coupons (in McSpeak that's "Buy One Get One Free") is the mono radio in the corner tuned into "All Oldies! All The Time!" 1050 CHUM.

Days pass, and a lot of what you hear is utter rubbish... "123" by Len Barry... any number of tommy james and the shondells "songs" (quotes mine), "tricia tell your daddy" and sundry Spectory covers by not-exactly-CanCon*-but-he'll-do CHUM-fave Andy Kim... we could go on but you'd get the idea. We won't even go on a tangent about pre-CanCon "hits" from the golden sixties, when CHUM refused to play anything from Canada that hadn't "proven" itself on American radio.

(Or maybe we will. For example, The Guess Who's huge worldwide smash These Eyes, which typically was passed on by CHUM until it showed up at #3 in Billboard). Nowadays, you hear it daily on CHUM, along with all the other Guess Who hits and demi-hits (there are so few charting Canadian records from that era that FM album tracks are treated like "hits", and many CHUM listeners who were stoned out of their minds at the time listening to "Progressive" sister station CHUM-FM probably can't tell the difference.

Anyhow, what was our point...oh yeah, now imagine that every once in a while you hear a song that's so beguiling that you stop working for its' entire two-and-half-minute duration and hope and pray that the DJ will actually announce for once what song he just played.

Well, in the summer of 1994 that song just happened to be "Pretty Ballerina" by the Left Banke, which took several listens before the DJ finally identified the goddamned thing, and finally a special order at Kops' oldies on Queen Street..

This one CD contains the complete recordings of the "baroque-pop" combo, two albums and a handful of singles for Mercury subsidiary Smash, and with that in mind it's awesome. Primary songwriter/pianist Michael Brown crafts some of the most intriguing compositions to come out of post-british invasion pop. The queasy bassline against the chipper harpsichord and layered harmonies of "I Haven't  got the Nerve" (sampled by the Folk Implosion on "Special One", I swear) and the joyous harmonies and stop-start rhythms of "She May Call You Up Tonight" are quirky pop gems, but there is also the ornate orchestral arrangement filtered through

Spectory horns of "Desiree" and the brooding "Men Are Building Sand" (an unreleased outtake that sounds like Song Cycle-era Van Dyke Parks a year earlier) and for good measure, "Evening Gown"--a shouty rave up with a cool (and astoundingly out-of-tune) arpeggiated piano break.

Singers Finn and Cameron's vocals are fey and a bit mannered, but it's Brown's songs with their odd chromatic twists and turns and complex arrangements that really stand out here.The most obvious comparisons are to Pet Sounds-era Brian Wilson and George Martin's vastly-uncredited baroque classical influence over the Beatles' more interesting compositions.

In sharp difference to Lennon and McCartney's lyrical genius, unfortunately, many of the lyrics (mostly written by the singers) here are standard- issue sixties misogy-pop, girls who have to be put in their place and boys willing to put them there. Some of the later tracks are sort of hippy-dippy lyrically, and the arrangements after Brown left the group in the midst of making their second album are definitely post-Sgt. Pepper and less distinctive.

Brown's tragic flaw seems to be that he never found a lyricist worthy of his music. After leaving the Left Banke he founded a group called The Montage (as I haven't found any of their records as of yet I can't really say much about them, although it sounds pretty psychedelic) and later formed a duo with a very young Ian Lloyd.

That group, the Stories, made one superb (well, superb-sounding at least. Lyrics aren't everything and Lloyd's lyrics are mostly inconsequential, except that he oversings just about every note.) self-titled chamber-pop album for Kama Sutra (still in print on CD!) before Brown split and Lloyd kept the band name. It's depressing to think that most people think of the Stories as the band that had the groan-inspiring AM radio hit) "Brother Louie" and the (very un-Brown) "Travelling Underground" LP.

Brown went on to form The Beckies, a power-pop group which sort of sounds like The Raspberries on mild psychedelics. Their one 1977 Sire album has Cheap Trick-like stadium dynamics, really cheezy forced vocals, and except for Brown the group is really young and pretty like they wanted to be the The Bay City Rollers or something. Still, Brown writes some really sublime and beautiful ballads like "On The Morning That She Came" and a mid-tempo rocker with a gorgeously ornate bridge that seemingly comes out of nowhere ("River Song"). Out of print but easily-found.

Someone from a record company told me a year or so ago that Brown lives in New York where he still writes but is still so embittered by his rock music experiences that he just makes tapes for himself and his friends. That's so cool. Chalk up one more tortured eccentric, thanks to the biz.

Previous Albums: Jim Ruiz Group: Brother Where Art Thou?

Please note: this feature does indeed fall under the "whimsies" category, and as such is provided to the end-user without warranties, express or implied of any kind. Bryk shall definitely not be held liable for any bum purchases arising from these cheap little reminisces. This feature will be updated semi-regularly, and we will archive them until they prove embarrassing.