So long, it’s been good to know ya. In a few weeks, Sacramento’s finest, Anton Barbeau returns to the States, but he leaves a host of fans and friends here in his adopted town. And as a parting gift there is this album, a pleasing mixture of summer-seasoned pop and melodic experimentalism.
‘Staring at the Sun’ and ‘You can Move a Mountain’ exemplify Barbeau’s more chart-friendly side, with strong echoes of Crowded House on the latter and The Travelling Wilburys on the former. His voice is not a million miles away from the late George Harrison’s and if you throw in a producer who knows his Jeff Lynn, some amiably amateurish harmonica playing balanced by Su Jordan’ preternaturally accurate backing vocals you have an almost uncanny reconstruction of that cosmically-unlikely supergroup. ‘Mountain’ is just a little rougher in style and none the worse for that, although the close harmony remains at perfection levels. The Neil Finn influence continues into ‘Beyond the Valley of the Dolphins’ which sounds a bit too close to ‘Weather with You’ for comfort, although Jaime Smith’s gentle violin work lifts it into a good place.
Barbeau’s inner hippy is given freer reign on songs such as ‘Poking Myself in the Eye to Spite my Finger’, which with its crazy lyrics about kissing the mouth of volcanoes and Jordan’s Barbie-Doll soprano is as baffling as the title suggests. More successful is ‘I’ve Been Craving Lately’ which starts like a Brave Combo party song (Barbeau is credited, justly, as playing ‘almost accordion’) and then morphs into an exhilarating piece of psychedelic Euro-pop, with a fabulously farty synth-bass bouncing along like an elephant on a pogo stick.
For sheer catchiness, ‘Who’s the Pony Now?’ takes the palm. It’s not really a song at all, more the sort of nursery rhyme the Midwich Cuckoos might have sung in order to drive their primary school teacher potty. In the modern era, it deserves to be taken up by football fans and hurled at the more statuesque opposition centre halves (Richard Dunne of Manchester City would be an obvious candidate) with the word ‘Pony’ replaced by ‘Donkey’.
Hopefully the sense of fun that informs this record has by now come across. Barbeau is a proper musician all right, but like Frank Zappa he knows that humour belongs in music and his album is one of light and life. Catch his few remaining live shows while you still can.