David Udell’s It’s Worth It is a wonderfully weird pop/psych-rock concoction that rivals the mysterious fun of the three witches’ “charmed pot” in Macbeth.
Sure, keep the “fillet of fenny snake” and “eye of newt and toe of frog,” but toss in a post-punk Nick Lowe vibe, a Beatles glance, sinewy keyboards, a Rickenbacker jangled strum, an occasional flute, brilliant pop songwriting (to distill that “Root of hemlock digged i’the dark”), a melodic electric guitar solo here and there, an oddly-voice electronic voyage that urges on the brink of a rather pleasant cosmic breakthrough, and quiet piano-graced introspection.
Indeed, this “rock ’n’ roll stew” (Thank you, Traffic!) does “bubble” with a ’70s vinyl freehold really cool expansive rock music euphoria.
The first two songs on It’s Worth It are even more “pure pop for (still!) now people.” First, “Watching the Freak Parade” rides on a post-punk bounce, with a clever modern lyric, a jagged electric guitar solo, and an engine room bass and drum that dance on narrow tightrope sanity. Perhaps, there’s even a bit of Ray Davies in the song. Then “It’s Beginning to Look Like Rain” is pop/psych (near!) perfection with the observation: “The sun is bright / the sky is blue” that morphs into “America’s gone insane / It’s beginning to look like rain.” Thankfully, the tune is wonderfully buoyant, in a tightly woven acoustic guitar tapestry with a delightful flute solo that induces some hope in accepting the approaching clouds stuffed with certain rain.
The psych groove continues: “Slow Song,” which in a certain tribute to Beatles star John Lennon, slurs time into half notes and in its way is still “sitting on a cornflake” and “waiting for the van to come.” The tune orbits any nice melodic planet. “Made My Peace” swirls with horns that “stop and say, ‘Hello’” under, of course, “blue suburban skies.” And “Our River” oozes with an Eastern folky ambiance that warps time and slowly disappears into the vapor of a very melodic ’60s counter-culture pipe dreamed thought.
David Udell’s brief and acoustic “The Motion Song” is a thoughtful interlude, with a slight calliope vibe. The same is true for “Solid Ground,” which spins with the acoustic guitar, nice backing vocals, and flute while throwing keyboard wizardry into the cauldron’s rock recipe.
But then, add the “gall of goat, and slips of yew / slivered in the moon’s eclipse” into the final three-part lunar landing. “Is It Worth It?” fires with more post-punk rock propulsion (with yet another lovely jagged electric guitar solo!) but morphs into “Unexplored Expanses,” which does just that. This is a sonic ride of distorted voices meshed into an electronic matrix of a German cosmic Brainticket Celestial Ocean ticket that seductively exits the stage with the final soliloquy of “It’s Worth It.”
It’s a beautiful piano-graced finale that seals a “return to sender” letter which is tossed (with warbled voice beauty!) into the universe in hopes of a patient reply that sings with both “boil and bubble” into the next, and always circular, spinning vinyl groove.
- David Udell – ‘It’s Worth It’ (2024) - July 15, 2024
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