Rum Bar Records, 25 September, 2020
Geoff Palmer and Lucy Ellis lean hard into the pop thing, and it turns out charming.
Geoff Palmer (The Connection, The Guts, The Nobodys, The New Trocaderos, and many more power pop and pop punk bands) and Lucy Ellis (The Spazzys, Lucy and the Rats) have been making some fantastic music for a good while now. Both know about punk angst and buzzing guitars. But both also know their way around a good pop hook. On their newest, Your Face Is Weird, the two partner up to make a distant duets record that stands up well.
Your Face Is Weird has a bunch of covers. In fact, 6 of the 8 songs are covers. My favorite of the bunch is, well, I guess that’s not all that clear-cut. I think in the many listens I’ve given the record, my favorite cover has changed between 4 different songs. Opener “In A Town This Size” was a favorite once. Originally a Kieran Kane country song, Geoff and Lucy alternate vocal leads and harmonize over lines about the difficulties of living in a small town. The Burt Bacharach song “I’ll Never Fall In Love Again” is another wonderful cover, feeling sort of bubblegum over a clever and unexpected melody and cadence on the chorus. “They Don’t Know”, a Kirsty MacColl song, has a lush arrangement and some nuanced drums while Lucy’s vocal lead is beautiful, pairing exquisitely with Geoff’s vocals on more great harmonies. And the chorus melody is disarmingly gorgeous. And then there’s “In Spite Of Ourselves”, the timely cover of the John Prine song. Geoff and Lucy do it justice, hitting the vocals just right and letting the melody seep into brains. I don’t know, maybe it’s hyperbole, but Geoff and Lucy’s version is pretty much the equal of the John Prine/Iris Dement original. There’s times where I think I might even like it more.
The two Your Face Is Weird originals are pretty awesome, too. “SWIM” is a fantastic over-the-moon in love sort of song with Lucy singing gorgeous crafted lines like “I’ll follow you around this great big world” and “after you I don’t need no one”. The guitars stay pretty clean and poppy with a little tremolo thrown in for good measure and it all ends up as a top shelf pop song. The other original, “Crash Of The Music”, is a sort of outlier on Your Face Is Weird. This one buzzes and pops with a little more restless energy and pace, coming across like an unearthed Chuck Berry tribute. Again, the melodies are spot on, as are the backing vocals. Impressive stuff.
Geoff Palmer and Lucy Ellis are onto something good with Your Face Is Weird. While it’s mostly missing the speed and buzzsaw guitars that make up so much of their past works, the chemistry between these two is palpable and the pop hooks are positively irresistible. It’s fantastic. It’ll be interesting to see if they come back to rekindle this spark another time or two.
Favorite song: “I’ll Never Fall In Love Again”
Favorite moment: Maybe when Lucy sings “bay-ee-by” after a quick pause around the 2 minute mark on “They Don’t Know”
Favorite whatever else: My favorite surprise was the opener, a cover of a country song (“In A Town This Size”) that injects just enough charm and harmony to work
ryan is a reviewer and news editor for TGEFM. He’s very secretive, he might be an alien.
