THE ROTTERS' CLUB

Almost flawless! Some supergroups reek of cold economics and fantasy baseball trading (maybe it was the last two years of Magna Carta records that gave me this cynicism), but here is a Canterbury dream team that sounds better than the sum of their parts. And oh what parts they are: Richard Sinclair's romanticly anglophile baritone and smooth bass, Dave Stewert's compositional genius and fender rhodes mastery, Pip Pyle (RIP)'s playful drumming and songwriting, and Phil Miller's jagged/smooth/jagged/smooth guitar playing that, like the band straddles the line between jazz and rock quite seamlessly. Taking all the parts of the stew that was their self titled album and polishing them to a shine, each song is worthy of commentary. But the perfect encapsulation of their sound is "Fitter Stoke Has a Bath." A (very silly) first person account of suicide by drowning, that turns wistful only at the last moment. There the electric piano and crooning is joined by a lush sea of female background vocals and flutes before Phil Miller takes a spotlight. Over a syncopated bass line, he sounds like he's playing a solo while falling down the stairs. And its wonderful. (as an aside, guitarists in the punk bands Television and Richard Hell and the Voidoids would start doing the same thing an ocean away in CBGBs just a few months later. Television's Marquee Moon album would definitely be of interest to anyone who likes adventurous music, seriously!) After an ambient interlude, the band steps sideways into "It Didn't Matter Anyway" a melancholy track with a gorgeous flute solo. I swear, if Micheal Buble covers that song, it'll be a standard within a decade.