Sunday, August 30, 2020

The 1980 Listening Post - The Stray Trolleys - Barricades and Angels

The Stray Trolleys - Barricades and Angels 


#329

1980 Housekeeping LISTENING POST DISCOVERY
The Stray Trolleys 
Barricades and Angels
Genre: New Pop/Power Wave
4.25 out of 5


Highlights:
The Secret Dreams Of A Kitchen Porter
A Bluebeat Kid
Gunslinger 
Flamingo Road




This is Martin Newell. Before he would become The Cleaners from Venus, a project I have found to be hit and miss, and after he left some other band I will never listen to, he made this album, a collection of memorable and sparkling post-sixties retro-pop. It fits in perfectly with the players of the time and I don’t know why he couldn’t get out of the shadows here, because it’s filled with great stuff that could sit alongside Nick Lowe and Graham Parker. 
Listen to that New Wave Reggae riff on “Ten Million Years” and tell me that it isn’t as good as anything Costello was doing at the time. 
What is there to say here? Sometimes an album is just chock full of well made songs that, when you drop the needle, you just let it play out and flip it over and keep on rolling. 

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