Scene and Heard – CCXXXXV : All The Leaves – The Foshays (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

Last time out The Foshays offered us a slice of Stax fuelled mutant punk-soul with ‘Til it’s Gone, this time the Minneapolis cartoon rock band revel in a 60’s psyche-pop stomp that feels less like the pastiche machinations of the likes of Jellyfish and Redd Kross and more like the genuine article. It is as if someone had recently unearthed long lost tapes from a studio who worked with bands who never quite got their break back in the day, never got to write their own footnote in the annals of music history but are now, a life time later, having their day in the sun.

Often this is the territory of the overplayed nostalgia card but thankfully the craftsmanship here is too clever to get suckered into the lowest common denominator of hippy dippy cliché and instead All The Leaves is a headier, trippier, more intense, deeper and more authentic place to be. In short it is the song itself that shines out, not the retro trappings they use to build it.

I guess in the same way that a whole host of West Coast indie bands in the 80’s coalesced around the 60’s vibes of Love and The Byrds to create a new jangle – pop infused sound that became known as The Paisely Underground, The Foshays might be seen as a similar musical experiment, one mining a more underground and garage band set of influences but similarly taking rich retro sonics to inform their new musical adventures.

This is not a backward glancing, pastiche or mere recycling of ideas, this is an appreciation of past times for sure but more so a desire to take the experiment on into the future. Oddly enough, despite its obvious reference points this is still a band centred in the here and now, one who are looking towards a brighter new sunrise rather than raging against the dying of the light of The Summer of Love. In short whilst you can see where they are coming from, what is more interesting is to see where they are going next.