Customer Reviews

All Your Summer Songs

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In direct response to the review posted by "Scott Heisel," the songs on this album are most certainly NOT straightforward pop songs that sound like they're actually from the sixties - on the contrary, they're a brilliant blend of motown and good old indie rock, sweet lullabies and love songs and tracks that make you want to jump up and down and eat popsicles. And the huge assortment of musicians and instruments on the album is not a problem, but rather a tribute to Fred's style and ethic - this is truly a collaborative project, drawing on sources from all over. This is an amazing album.

This is a really, really great album. For genuine music lovers, this is a must-have. The songs have an awesome catchy hook to it, the voices are amazing, and the lo-fi places you in a different world apart from all the generic music that's out there.

This is a solid album that just keeps getting better with every listen. It's got more hooks than a tacklebox. The production style is a throwback to the early 60's, and it works beautifully. Try and track down the LP - clear vinyl and two extra tracks.

I love this album!! That said, it isn't an album you can listen to only once and feel like you know it. Others have said they keep hearing more as they listen, and so do I. The lyrics have some notes of Dylan and Neil Young, and the vocals bring up memories ranging from Mick Jagger to Brian Wilson. Even the sad songs put me in a good mood, for their honesty and intensity. But what I love most about Saturday Looks Good to Me is their energy. If you get to see them live, or even just read the group's homepage, you know that Fred and friends love what they're doing-- making music for us!

The development of a style looking back to '50s and '60s pop was one of the unlikely shifts in the Detroit indie scene of the late millennium. His Name is Alive frontman Warren Defever may have sparked it off with his 1996 album Stars on ESP and following "Nice Day" EP, but Defever's mix of retro stylings with noise and perverse lyrics was too peculiar to be duplicated. Former HNIA collaborator Fred Thomas picked up this interest in the past and gave it his own twist with his project Saturday Looks Good to Me. Their 2003 effort ALL YOUR SUMMER SONGS offers up twelve slices of pop that adopt the instrumentation and vocals of 1960s soul, and maintain its production values such as "wall of sound" effects and delighting in stereo and dub possibilities, while clearly being a product of the recent indie scene.

Half of the songs feature Erika Hoffmann, who served as vocalist for HNIA during the era of Defever's oldies obsession. Her sweet singing presents an innocent charm and congrues with the 1960s production, but the words are very much of our time. In "Meet Me by the Water" Hoffmann encourages her lover to bring his Raincoat 45s so they can dance together, while in "Alcohol" she chastizes a sot boyfriend who conked out at a New Year's party well before midnight. Thomas himself sings on a few songs, which are in a rather different vein, heard-on-sleeve emotionalism speaking of the joy and sadness in unsuccessful relationship. They fit into the album as a whole well, and though the music isn't as outstanding, the lyrics certainly are. "The Sun Doesn't Want to Shine", for example, features the poetic lines, "When I walk through your old neighborhood / and the ghosts fly from tree to tree, / they sing out all the notes that we threw away / in invisible harmonies."

This is one of the most enjoyable pop efforts in my collection, and though Thomas takes inspiration from 60s fluff, his musical creations have a great deal of depth to them. Sure, the album isn't perfect, and I perceive three or four songs as filler, but I can certainly recommend this to just about any listener.

Mad catchy. Mad sweet. If you're into the good old twee style...you'll love thgis thing. It's not a bad listen the whole way through and that's mad sweet.

So there's this band called Saturday Looks Good To Me, right? They're from Michigan, and they're the brainchild of Fred Thomas [of Lovesick, His Name Is Alive, and many more]. The basic premise of said band seems to be "let's play fairly straightforward 60's-esque pop songs and record them in a vintage style, making people think they really *are* fairly straightforward pop songs actually from the 60's."

Yeah, it's kind of confusing, but it's the best explanation I can come up with. The cast of musicians on this record [almost 30 strong in all] feature some of indie rock's notables like Ted Leo and Tara Jane O'Neill contributing vocals, but the album is so confusingly put together that I have no idea who plays or sings what where.

Each of the album's 13 tracks sound like they are from a time capsule that was buried under Motown Records in the early sixties. While each of these songs contain that vintage sound [which really makes me wonder how Fred recorded these songs], they are unique enough from each other in most cases. The upbeat numbers are here, the ballads are here, the just plain "artsy" tracks are here, and somehow they all seem to coalesce into an easy-to-swallow album.

My biggest complaint about the disc is that each song runs into another - that is, there is no down time between songs, but no segues either. One ends and another begins without even a split second in between them. Maybe Fred was going for a "turning the dials of a radio" effect, in which case I applaud him; if he just decided to do the sequencing like this just to be difficult, then I should punch him in the gut.

If you're into sensitive indie rock like Belle and Sebastian or well-produced and well-orchestrated stuff like "Pet Sounds"-era Beach Boys, this album is right up your alley. I can see audiophiles all over the place perking their ears up as this CD plays out, almost wishing they could hear the grooves of the well-worn vinyl through their stylus but instead being disappointed that recordings this well-crafted are on a compact disc format.

But for us normal listeners, we'll just sit here and wonder "how in the hell did this band open on the Saves The Day tour last fall and not just get murdered by their fans?"

'All Your Summer Songs' seems to capture the spirit of every feel-good summer hook from the 60's and 70's, and squeezed into one album. My first impression was the retro 60's vibe of Olivia Tremor Control pumped-up on Brian Wilson-type strings, rings, and chimes galore, overseen by the lush production of Phil Spector. Thrown into the mix are slivers of the British Invasion riff-oriented sound, Belle And Sebastian's orchestral lounge, dabbling in a little Stonesy country-twang. But generally this CD is as much a homage to Phil Spector and Brian Wilson's adventurism as it is to the late psychadelic 60's, and to be honest, the more I'm listening to this, the more I'm liking it. 'All Your Summer Songs' transports you back somewhere in between kischy 60's sitcoms and The Age Of Aquarius, reminding one of more naive and happier times, when it really didn't take much to make you smile.

I love this album. Buy it. End of story.
Favorite songs:
Untitled (Angels out of Airplanes)
Meet Me By The Water
Ambulance
Alcohol
Typing
Ultimate Star

Even though retro-rock is really taking a step forward for music, it doesn't really matter to me right now because I know something good will come out soon and blow us all away and start a new revolution, but until then this band is probably one of the best out there. This review is only for fans of indie pop though, as their music is nowhere near the mainstream no matter how catchy and fun the songs are. I gave the album 5 stars, but if I had the ability I would give it a 9 out of 10. They are not the best band in existence, but they are a damn good one. Just because a majority of their sound is borrowed from one time period doesn't make it bad at all. I only hope that one day they reissue this bands back catalog that sadly has not been released yet and is out of print. If you like indie pop in general you should buy this record.