Agony Street’s new album (to almost quote the great Nick Lowe) is Pure Pop for Always Now People. Italian Whisky features wonderfully weird catchy music that echoes the sublime sounds of the Kinks, the Bonzo Dog band, (the always-amazing) Stackridge, Paul McCartney, his sadly neglected brother Michael McGear, Ireland’s finest in the Saw Doctors, and countless other bands that caught the weird sea breeze of any British seaside holiday town with fun, sun, and lovely fish-and-chips shops galore.
This project is the brainchild of the late Swedish multi-instrumentalist Klas Qvist and vocal/production cohort Gudmundur Bragason. No matter, a good fish-and-chips shop with certain malt vinegar saturates the newspaper wraps (and pop music) of countless countries – and with radio signals, spreads the grease that lubricates the wheels of any sort of musical universe. Perhaps “Love Me Do” and “Waterloo Sunset” did the very same thing.
Italian Whisky begins amid a brief bit of “Overture” craziness, with a bell, imaged vinyl crackles, a woman’s “hello, darling” voice, and a stately dab of lovely symphonic brush. This is followed by the pop-perfect “The Girl Next Door,” with a descending bass, an uplifting chorus, a harpsichord, and a feather pillow vocal.
Then “All Those Golden Years Ago (Song for Anki)” is even more melodic, with sightly tense strings, a few “la, la, las,” and a calypso vibe. Really, this all recalls the before-mentioned Stackridge, circa their masterpiece Pinafore Days. The same is true for the banjo-pulsed but ironically rather sad love story of “You Turn Me Off.” A continued sense of nice weirdness creeps under the universal pub door as the title track adds an old sea-dog shanty voice that is colored by a tin whistle and an accordion. It’s an odd turnpike twist that juxtaposes the previous clever pop music of the previous three songs.
“You Are Gwendolyn” (with a mention of “Monica”) throws a memory dart into the beautiful and eternal spin of the Kinks and their Village Green Preservation Society album. Then the vibe continues with the piano and innocent vocals of “Save 20 Minutes.” Yeah, and there’s a bit of backward guitar in there, too. Big compliments all around! Because this is clever pop music, there’s also a brief interlude with the sinister “After Approximately Seven Glasses of Italian Whisky.” Nice.
Now, it’s just an idea, but Agony Street’s Italian Whisky could be mistaken for one of those Time-Life television commercials which would sell a collection all-time radio hits with the help of an aging and almost-forgotten pop star and his (usually) feminine foil. Except, I must add, the LP has an appropriately thematic “bottle” cover, which is in contrast to the predictably cruddy artwork of those Time-Life compilations.
Sorry to make the association, but Italian Whisky spins a continuous infection groove, with no need at all for the advocacy of that aging and almost-forgotten pop star and his never-known but always fun-loving and quite gregarious Time-Life co-star foil. As my friend Kilda Defnut often says, “Great pop music continues to send brand new radio signals to potential always-eager alien ears.”
That said, “Letter from Hell” is a racehorse that wins with a wobbly warble that inches over the pop race finish line with an itchy vocal. It does, indeed, conjure the Saw Doctors, circa their brilliant album, Songs from Sun Street. And the crazy pop euphoria continues: “Next Door to a Looney” is even more great pop music and condenses melodic madness into a pretty great radio signal for those lovely alien ears, with a few more “la, la, las,” to boot! A less addled Syd Barrett might have written the tune.
“Time to Go Home” dances to a ska-organ pumped pulse, and (literally) gallops into the next song. “Mom’s Street” then puffs “She’s Leaving Home”-era Beatles, with odd voices and equally bizarre sounds that hover in a hazy psychological dark melodic memory. Raymond Douglas Davies, circa Something Else, again comes to mind. “Global City (Nothing Is Everything)” gets wonderfully sarcastic in a Brave New World ala “Lola” (to quote the Kinks, once again!) “mixed up, muddled up, shook up world” sort of way.
The sarcasm continues to flow into “Utopia,” with its marched precision and weird ironic commentary that proves the deep mettle of this album as it flows from imagined vinyl crackles, pop love songs, a whole lots of Kinks memories, an old sea dog’s growl, an amazing collection of radio-friendly tunes, an occasional psych-rock trip, a slight Beatles vibe – and in the final grooves, the necessary wisdom of lyrical insight into our world that continues to need music that is, after all, Pure Pop for Always Now (and quite intelligent) People.
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