| Print |

Sunday, 27 November 2005 11:04

Robinson’s sharp ear for classic pop chord progressions pays off in spades—whether he’s singing about mysterious ladies (the serpentine stomp-rocker “Psychic Woman,” with a wicked falsetto Barry-Gibb-on-a-bender hook) or absolutely nothing (“Nana Nanana”), he fills every corner of Mushu Pork with sticky hooks, reverb-drenched guitars, and the joyful noise of someone doing what they truly love.

RICKY LEE ROBINSON: MUSHU PORK (Hypnodisk)

Word of warning to bands interested in getting press for their new CDs: Most music critics are jaded and shallow (and a few other things we’d prefer not to share with the general public), and as much as appearances shouldn’t matter, they often do. When a writer’s staring down an imposing stack of unfamiliar CDs, you better believe that said writer checks those records out in order of how cool or interesting the album art appears. Which is why it took me so long to get to this record. Wrapped up in art that screams “local band” and a negative cover photo of what appears (at first glance) to be a bowl of grasshoppers, Ricky Lee Robinson’s Mushu Pork turned me off before I’d cracked it open. More often than not, crappy, barely thought-out album art can equal crappy, barely thought-out music. I only divulge this sad-but-usually truism because I’d hate for you—thumbing through the bins at your local record shop and coming across this record on your own—to do the same, this being one of those rare cases of great book/crap cover.

New York-via-San Francisco rocker Ricky Lee Robinson is one-man band, but not like Prince or Lenny Kravitz or any of those other “geniuses” notorious for fussily neat-freaking themselves into playing every instrument on their records. Performing and recording several instruments simultaneously—including a foot-controlled three-piece drum kit and a guitar specially rigged with a “polyphonic octaver” to cover the high and low ends—Robinson’s an old-timey one-man band, like that sad guy in the straw hat at Six Flags whose eye contact you and your punk friends made sure to avoid. But instead of barking out dixieland ditties or knee-cymbal soloing to “When the Saints Go Marching in,” Robinson uses this unusual performance style to revel in his serious jones for obscure ’60s- and ’70s-era Nuggets-friendly pop.

Busking his heart out in a double-tracked voice reminiscent of a less-sexed Diamond Dogsera Bowie, Robinson’s debut disc of mostly original material (following a 2003 self-titled all-covers release) is sparkling with inspired energy—a record so sunny that two of its nine tracks (“Welcome Home Sunshine” and “Hello Sunshine”) speak directly to our solar system’s big (fiery) cheese.

While Robinson indulges his love of rare and unusual ’70s pop covers early on here—opening with the heartfelt Crabby Appleton rocker “Go Back” and “Jeans on,” a minor U.K. hit by “Lord” David Dundas that originated as an ad jingle for Brutus Jeans—it’s the seven originals that follow those fun exercises in pop nostalgia that really shine. Robinson’s sharp ear for classic pop chord progressions pays off in spades—whether he’s singing about mysterious ladies (the serpentine stomp-rocker “Psychic Woman,” with a wicked falsetto Barry-Gibb-on-a-bender hook) or absolutely nothing (“Nana Nanana”), he fills every corner of Mushu Pork with sticky hooks, reverb-drenched guitars, and the joyful noise of someone doing what they truly love.

The only rub here is that Robinson’s doing-it-all-at-once shtick, while surely engrossing and entertaining in person, can sometimes make for a ramshackle groove on record. Sure, it’s cool that Robinson is recording several instruments himself simultaneously (in the studio, he plays at least two at a time, often starting with drums and guitar or drums and piano), but if you hear the recording without being aware of that, it often sounds more like a spirited demo by a good band with a lousy drummer—a disservice to songs as rocking as the barroom piano-led “Regular Monday Thing” (marred by a drum intro that is anything but “regular”) and as melodically charming as the gorgeous, Lennon-esque “Welcome Home Sunshine.”