Electric Needle Room are brothers Matt and Steven Beat from Nebraska and this is their fourth studio album. Autobiographical details now over (there isn't much more to tell anyway), let's take a listen to "Safe, Effective and Fun".
So they don't have the budget of Phil Spector, but they throw enough curve balls to convince the listener that this album is more than just twee pop. The direct nature of the lyrics do indeed mirror the trivialities of the life that they comment upon and this is no better illustrated than in "Love Is Not About Teeth". The aforementioned commentary on life's trivialities - such as dental hygiene - is, of course, endemic to twee pop but here you get a directness that seems at odds with a truly artistic endeavour. I don't really know why I thought of The Beach Boys but they did do more than their fair share of name checking cities and Electric Needle Room follow their lead in "Midwestern City" (only without the sand of course). The lot of the musician at the bottom of the food chain even gets addressed in "Oleaver's Pub Won't Let Us Play There Anymore". Without even the vaguest attempt at poetry, either. It's like a blog set to music .In fact, now that I've listened to the entire album, that's the overall feeling. Observation set to music without even the slightest attempt at decoration. You can't actually argue with that approach even if you might want to.
I bet that if these two brothers drank ten pints of Guinness (between them) they'd turn into a rock band. Perhaps that is what they really want to be? Happiness is a blonde rock chick (who really "gets" your music…). I know you didn't ask but I thought I'd tell you anyway.
Available from Series Two Records.