With a name copped from both Dennis Wilson and Richard Brautigan (you figure it out), PACIFIC OCEAN FIRE formed in 2001 and have since been wheedling their way into our hearts via a series of (initially) bedroom-recorded EPS and an eponymous debut album which rewarded them with support slots for notable names such as Damien Jurado, Jesse Malin, The Broken Family Band and Kristin Hersh’s 50 Foot Wave.
It’s not hard to see why when you hear their three contributions to this split 10” EP with Sorted Records labelmates DON’S MOBILE BARBERS either. The laid-back and louche country-rock groove of lead tune “Never Gonna Make Old Bones” quickly gets you onside with its’ tangible echoes of both the early Band and a dash of UK contemporaries such as the under-rated Lone Pine. The song itself appears to be a paean to going out gloriously before you grow old - though it’s hardly a new “My Generation” – but for all the intimations of mortality it still sounds entirely celebratory, and the blaring Neil Young-ish harmonica and latter day trumpet solo will soon steal your heart.
Second track “Lost Chapters” confirms the good impression with its’ downhome, acoustic feel and brushed drums. It’s regretful and wistful in tone (“and the death of my childhood/ ended much sooner than it should”) and built around a ringing guitar figure which flits in and out like a spectre at the feast. It’s good, but no match for POF’s final track “I’m A Stranger Here”, which – despite its’ Bill Callahan-esque title – evokes the enigmatic and shape-shifting desert landscapes of Giant Sand and Thin White Rope’s best work with lonesome sighs of pedal steel wafting around like the proverbial ghostly tumbleweed. It’s elegiac and pretty and shows that while POF may have finally left the bedroom behind, their songs remain things of dusty and organic wonder.
So your reviewer was suitably stoked with expectation as he eased into the chair for a good clipping by DON’S MOBILE BARBERS, yet while their four songs are all competent and adequately performed, the end results are considerably less arresting and memorable than those peddled by their rootsy labelmates.
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Actually, despite their cool and kooky name, it’s the sheer ordinariness of Don’s Mobile Barbers that ultimately turns you away from them. Despite a proficient strike rate that has seen the Birstall-based duo record three albums in barely three years, the four songs here suggest quantity is perhaps revered above quality, as none of these four tracks really grabs you and demands more than a cursory listen or two.
Best of the bunch is surely the opening “The Game Is Up” which proffers guitar, drums and fuzzy Moog-y bass and comes across as winningly forlorn with vocals from the higher-register Wayne Coyne school. It’s OK, but not much more, but of the remaining trio, the most this writer can be moved to remark is that “Solutions” is quite atmospheric and dreamy; “Anymore” features buzzy, analogous synth and what could possibly be a Jew’s Harp making bullfrog-style noises and “Always The Same”s title is scarily apt. Indeed, when they admit “I’m sorry, I was miles away” (“Anymore”) it could just as easily be this writer confessing he’s been zoning in and out for the past 15 minutes. Oh well.
So something of a mixed blessing in the end. In conclusion, PACIFIC OCEAN FIRE are something of a roots-related find and very much worth the price of admission alone, but while DON’S MOBILE BARBERS have one of the best names currently doing the rounds out there, their anaemic indie suggests you should forsake their candy stripe pole and treat yourself to a short back and sides somewhere else down the street.
(www.pacificoceanfire.com)
(www.donsmobilebarbers.co.uk)
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