Stuff In My Pockets is the latest eclectic album from Vic Ruggiero who you will know from The Slackers and Stubborn All-Stars. The album was recorded in Philadelphia and New York.
The A-side opens with Now We Know a bruised country twanging blues that takes some inspiration from early Dylan as well as the playground game I was tortured with as a kid, as this relationship falls apart against the gentle music.
Adam And Eve is a twanging old school country rocker, with some lovely pedal steel. as this tale of lost love unfolds gently. Everyday Things is organ led in the style of early Squeeze or Joe Jackson as he sings about the mundanity as well as love his ex has for all the little things.
Just Like You has an early rock & Roll feel with scuffling drums, with young lust for another girl, who is pretty much like his current girl, like the rogue he is, he wants to have a whirl with her too. The scintillating guitar solo showing the fever he has for that next conquest.
Lonesome Track sounds like a 50's Soda Shop pop song of yearning with a Hawaiian twist musically, almost like he's singing in a Tiki bar as we all sip cocktails, hoping they are nothing like the cocktails Elvis was on before Aloha From Hawaii.
The B-side opens with the chugging pub rock of No One Knows as Vic sings of the old times, of the places and scenes he's heard about, before becoming a part of this scene, it's sung to his partner in crime.
Pot Of Gold has a bucolic neckerchief rock feel, like the Faces at there most laid back, this sounds like Denny Laine inspired the music and style, as yet one more Pot Of Gold slips out of his hands.
Right And Wrong is in the style of the Attractions, with pounding piano as the questions keep coming thick and fast like they need to pump them out, as he continually claims that he thinks he's right, when he's probably wrong, we all know folks like that, they normally end up in politics.
Stuff in My Pockets is fast and frantic pub rock as he stuffs his pockets of all sorts of stuff, a remarkable Harmonica is one thing pulled out of those pockets, wailing against that frantic riff.
The album closes with Wonder that is laid back country picking as he keeps his sense of Wonder, no matter how much everything goes awry, he keeps on hoping to be able to explain everything in his own private movie, this is closely observed yet totally universal.
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