The cover photo of this reciord looks like a night sky over this quintet's home town of Nottingham in the UK but this is a set of songs which carries the listener across the pond to the US of A.
The 150 word text on the back of the lyrics booklet reads like the opening page of a movie script and begins: "Picture this: late afternoon, tarmac turning to treacle. A stone high-rise office block, American Gothic, oddly familiar, think Acme Corp.". It concludes Meteorites plays on a beat jukebox in a dusty bar, welcome home. Welcome to Fritz's Beach"
One thing's for sure - we're a long way from Sherwood Forest!
References to "wide, windy boulevards" on the title track serve to confirm the stateside setting for the tunes.
As an actor, the band's leader Phil Smeeton must be particularly aware of the mythical lure of all things American via the small and big screens. Given the hard-boiled pulp fiction style of his writing, it's tempting to think of each song in cinematic terms or, failing that, as a condensed screenplay.
Whether deliberately or not, One-Eyed Jacks shares its title with Marlon Brando's one and only film as director and, keeping with the Brando connection, Godfather author Mario Puzo is the subject of Only In America.
There are, as far as I know, no movies yet called King Of Pool or Good Man Gone Down but you could use either as part of a pitch to a movie mogul.
All twelve songs were written by Smeeton but he sings lead on only four of them. With the rest of the vocal duties being handed over to Hazel Atkinson it is she who accompanies us down to the aforementioned Fritz's Beach (in Miami?) for the opening song and invites us to admire the silver sun and taste the breeze.
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Atkinson is essentially the star vehicle of the show and as such is required to assume a variety of roles. For the sleezy Manwhippa! she relates the story of a dominatrix ("Sleek and slick, a vision in black") and on Someone Else's Wife she's a woman tempted into a clandestine affair ("You were loyal and wise till he breathed on your eyes").
Meanwhile, for the sultry Till The End Of Time she could easily pass for Cowboy Junkies' Margio Timmins and then plays sassy quite convincingly on the bluesy Working Woman.
The range of styles means that the album overall does not fit neatly into any one genre.
It is probably destined to the labelled as Americana for the way in which the songs evoke the atmosphere of cult movies from the 1950s or 60s and I somehow doubt that Phil Smeeton would have too many complaints about this.
Tiny Dog Records' website
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