I can’t say that I had heard of Billy Reeves before but it would seem that he was in a band called theaudience way back in the day when Britpop was the new black. The question in my simple mind, therefore, was whether “Steve” was more of something I could not remember or just the rantings of a ghost from the past.
Questions, questions, questions. Answers, answers, answers. Nothing here sounds like what the oldies would call a hit single yet there was something almost puppy dog appealing about the songs on this album. There are no truly complex arrangements and, in fact, all that is here sounds quite simplistic and looped but the true value is to be found in the entertainingly ironic lyrics that infuse Britpop influences into ironically thesaurus derived couplets. That, as you might imagine, should not work anywhere near as well as it does and credit has to be duly given to Billy Reeves’s wry humour that, in his curiously sentimental way, brought these songs to life.
I know that I should not like an album like this. Old timers reviving their musical career should be treated with all the respect such endeavours should be treated with only, this time, this album just worked. Maybe I am just getting old but I actually liked what I heard so, when all is said and done, it is fair to say that there’s life in the old dog yet. I mean Billy Reeves, not me, of course.