Friday, January 27, 2012

REVIEW: Chris Devotion and the Expectations - Amalgamation & Capital


How do you like your pop served? For my part, I have a broad (and to my mind, cultured) palate that accommodates fine pop music in multiple modes. But if you were to offer me an album of concise indie pop and punk pop songs, delivered with a swagger and superb musicianship and sung with the quality and verve a Stax Records soul singer, I'd say you were offering me a heaping plate of Amalgamation & Capital by Glasgow's Chris Devotion and the Expectations.

Opening track is the rousing "A Modest Refusal", the name of which is a twist on Swift's Modest Proposal --


CD&EX features Chris Devotion (vocals/guitar),
Colin 'Rock-A-Bye' Reid (guitar/vocals), Michael Wright (bass/vocals), and Graham Christie (drums/vocals). On this album, they race through a generous helping of sixteen songs ranging from punk, to pop, to garage, and even a Celtic-punk stomper ("I Ain't Got No Home"). But it all hangs together because of the devotion (sorry, Chris) to melody and riffs. The point isn't that CD&EX is inventing a new style of music, it is that they are cooking up a heady stew of existing styles that is exciting and entertaining. Try the indie rock of "Blister" --


Amalgamation & Capital is released on January 30 on Armellodie Records. This album is going to be in my player for a long, long time.

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