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splendid.com
- Cultural cross-pollination between the colonies and
Britain has seen many mutant musical strains take root abroad,
but American college rock has thus far stubbornly resisted
transplant. Mike Wyzgowski of London-based sextet Garlic gets
it, though; his band has studied the essence of Yank indie
heroes Pavement right down to the wry lyricism, scruffy
haircuts and thrift-store fashion sense. On their second
album, the band staples keys, pedal steel and a scrapyard full
of lo-fi sonic touches to the standard American Indie Rock
Template, synthesizing elements of alt-country and space rock
into a brew that radiates a warped, rambling charm straight
out of the Stockton, CA summer of '96. Guitars lazily shuffle
along in the opening "A Weird Wood Soul", breezily buffet the
peppy murder-pop of "Never Gonna Let You Go" and merrily hurl
themselves against each other under a layer of fuzz in
"Waverly". Wyzgowski's vocals further plumb the depths of
America's underground, adopting Stephen Malkmus's out-of-key
quaver one minute, a Lou Reed drawl circa Berlin the
next. It's anyone's guess where, exactly, an homage to
mid-'90s US alt-rock fits in a present-day UK gone ape for the
greasy retro-rock of the Darkness and Kings of Leon, but
Jam Sabbatical will tide the backpack brigade over
until their next Matador mail-order arrives. - Steve
English
Sponic
Zine.com (USA) -
Life
can be tough for a UK indie band. While there is a definite
indie niche in America, the UK indie underground is not as
well developed. The reason may be that indie bands in the UK
actually have a chance at chart success. Bands that are cults
here (The Smiths, Stone Roses) had several hits across the
pond. This has left a sustained period of time where modest
indie bands have the brass ring in sight. So with the chance
of success attainable, when an indie UK band stays lo-fi and
isn’t picked up by NME, they will languish in obscurity. The
only hope is to catch on amongst the American
kids.
Garlic seems to be playing to the American crowd
more than the home crowd on Jam Sabbatical. If the band
decides to make touring the states a priority, they have a
chance of catching on. The songs on Jam Sabbatical are
musically akin to The Shins. While the songs are not quite up
to snuff with The Shins (really it’s unfair to compare anyone
to The Shins these days) the songs contain the same whimsy
bolstered by meticulous song structures.
The other
aspect that stands out is Mike Wyzgaowski’s dead ringer of a
voice for Lou Reed’s Loaded -era voice. “100 Miles” and
“A Weird Wood Soul” are the Velvets at their most accessible.
Garlic has big ideas, but pulls them off with modest means and
subtle results. When extra instruments are thrown into the
mix, it is necessary and not just a band trying to add a new
sound for no apparent reason. Synths are doled out, but not
obvious. Cello comes in without sounding ridiculous and
pretentious.
[If] Garlic can play their cards right
they can languish in obscurity at home and build a nice
following here. 3/5 - Kevin Neudecker Dec
03
CDTIMES.co.uk - Garlic are the hardy perennials
of the London live scene, and have gigged non-stop since their
inception and that's reflected in this collection of songs.
Jam Sabbatical sounds like a band who are have begun
to find their feet somewhat and the first thing that strikes
you about this album is the confidence and maturity that it
exudes.
The nice thing about Garlic is their refusal to
fit neatly into any neat pigeonhole. There are influences
here, sure, but just when you think you have a handle on them,
Garlic have a habit of throwing something leftfield at you.
Opener, and single, A Weird Wood Soul, has a warm, 1970's
acoustic vibe to it, with building strings and Mike
Wyzgowski's lilting, sardonic voice bolted on top. This is
immediately followed by Kathleen And Marie which is all fuzzy
guitars and distortion. Elsewhere, 100 Miles has a country
vibe, slide guitar and almost nursery rhyme like vocals and
hand claps. It's an album filled with little moments of
unexpected treats.
If you've seen them live, (and if you
haven't, please do) then a few songs on here will be familiar.
Waverly, a loose, fast rock/pop song with a chorus to die for,
has been captured with no loss of intensity. Kathleen And
Marie, too is familiar and has lost nothing in translation;
it's odd lyrical arrangement still jars and brings a smile
"I was a drummer in a previous life/I had no money/And I
could not get a wife." One of the things they do extremely
well is contrasting horror with homour, as in Face Down
"Everything I touch just seems to turn to mould/And all of
the things I used to like just seem so old" could have
been one of the most depressing songs of all time had it not
been written with a bouncy, upbeat sort of tune. "I should
have stayed in bed cos everything is fucked" is one of the
best lines to be uttered on any album.
Indeed, lyrics are
a strong point in the world of Garlic, and the delivery is
dry, witty and cutting. The last song, The Stenhousemuir Of
Love is a case in point; "Hey girl, don't be mortified if
you don't see a model in the mirror in your room/That's your
true reflection, hit the treadmill regularly, and you might
have a chance" Garlic have a nice line in humour seeped in
despair. "Brace yourself and then condemn your honesty you
can't afford the hills of beverly" from Waverly,
illustrates this and the wordplay that is present throughout.
It's little touches like this that make Garlic stand out.
Jam Sabbatical comes highly
recommended. As a collection of songs, it's faultless and
there's even been effort in the track listing, so that
listening to the album as a whole ensures the experience is a
rounded and complete experience. On this album, Garlic are
confident, dark, warm and witty and sounding like a band on
top form. It's impossible to classify, call it alt.country if
you like, indie rock if you must or pop-grunge as The Guardian
once called them (in what must have been the long, dark
tea-time of the sub-editor's soul), but, whatever you call
them, give them a listen at the same time. 8/10 - Karl Wareham
Oct 03
Rock Sound - If they're the
spiritual children of Grandaddy, does that make them Daddy?
Just one of many questions you'll be asking after a quick
delve into Scots sextet Garlic's second album. Like: how
American can a Caledonian bunch sound anyway? (Though tracks
like 'Waverly' are, at least, comfortably provincial.) And
what are they going on about in 'A Weird Wood Soul'? Whatever
it is, we suspect it comes tinged with romantic nostalgia,
since, lyrically at least, that seems to be what the 'Lic do
best, getting wistful over drunken nights in 'Philmore' and
going all Casablanca on us in '100 Miles' ("a hundred bars in
the city, and you had to drink in mine" etc) while painting
randomly and colourfully on a wide canvas somewhere windswept
and westerly, most touchingly on the closing 'The
Stenhousemuir Of Love'. Strange and beautiful, and as
thrilling as The Thrills ought to be. 7/10 - Iain Moffat Sept
03
X-RAY - A Weird Wood
Soul single review - You can usually guess what a band sound like from
their name, but just what does the name Garlic suggest?
Certainly not a British interpretation of alt.country, which
is what you have here - an unlikely name matching an unlikely
concept. It works, however, lilting, gently burred vocals -
like a softer Lou Reed - successfully partnering rambling,
plucked acoustic guitar on the title track and languid pianos
and pedal steel on 'Philmore'. 3/5 - Chris Blue Sept
03
BANG -
Garlic can count New Order amongst their fans, though not
among their influences. There's not a hint of electronic sheen
to this, their second album. Jam Sabbatical is a
collection of skewed, death-obsessed love songs you won't hear
on Top of the Pops.
It begins with 'A Weird Wood
Soul', which is the most gorgeous song ever written about bad
nannying (spot the anagram) before progressing through 10
tracks of eccentrically British alt-country. Songwriter Mike
Wyzgowski (hey, wasn't he the little one-eyed fella in
Monsters Inc ?) threatens his
girlfriend with murder ('Never Gonna Let You Go'), rhymes
'fucked' with 'self-destruct', and sounds like your favourite
school teacher ('Face Down'), voice fragile and lyrics wry,
while slide guitars and acoustics find all of Wilco's best
chords. This is the sound of the new west with the simple
delivery of Stephen Malkmus and the heart of a weirdo. 4/5 -
Suzy West Sept 03
The
Independent - Delivering
their first album proper for this respected indie, songwriter
Mike Wyzgowski and the gang swagger through 10 warped lazy
country rock shuffles, produced in a delightful way that allow
the songs to breathe and the wry lyrics to stand out. In a
genre that's becoming tried and lazy, it's a bright outing,
spiced by British eccentricity. 4/5
NME - Garlic
are still best known for having a pop-trance cover of one of
their songs (Oakenfold's versh of 'Not Over Yet') strike big.
And not many people even know it was their song. 'Jam
Sabbatical', their second album, highlights a band who deserve
a little more than lucrative ignominy. For the most
part.
Unhelpful more-Pavement-than-Pavement moments aside,
they have a pleasingly delicate touch: Mike Wyzgowski,
the fella at the helm, appears to have lofty ambitions up
there with the odd-pop songwriter greats. Despite twinkling
pedal-steel meanderings like '100 Miles' and 'Philmore', he's
not quite a Malkmus yet, let alone a Brian Wilson. But when
Garlic are less in thrall to their favourites, you get
the impression they might craft something special one day.
5/10 - Noel Gardner Sept 03
The Times -
The London-based Garlic make the sort of sweet, fuzzy
well-crafted alt.country music associated with lo-fi US bands.
The album opener and obvious highlight A Weird Wood
Soul is a gentle, melancholy song with fragile vocals,
slide guitars and more than a hint of Pavement about it, while
Never Gonna Let You Go should find favour with
Grandaddy fans. 3/5
LOGO -
Sometimes it's lovely to see folk standing
firm. Garlic - London's sun-splashed
purveyors of crisp alt. country - last year ran face-first
into a commercial brick wall with their
debut LP, the wonderfully titled 'Murky
World Of Seats', shifting barely a handful. With their take on
love, life and everything amid skewed and
delightfully off-kilter melodies, their appeal was (and is) never going to extend beyond the
tattered edges of the mainstream. 'Jam
Sabbatical' stands as a response to this commercial
shackle, proving, one feels, that Garlic
couldn't give a toss. Embracing Americana
and adding a delightfully English lilt to proceedings, 'Jam
Sabbatical' is a cracking album that
refuses to compromise. Go buy it; you'll
feel a hell of a lot better. - Pete Steel Sept
03
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popmatters.com (USA)
- The more I write
about music, the more I'm convinced that music criticism is a
preening echo chamber of esoteric aesthetics bandied about by
people so torn by their herd instincts that every sentence is
a tortured approximation of rote individuality. But who's
gonna give up free CDs out of some principled protest? Not
this kid.
I say this because as I was listening to this album
with my boyfriend, we got in a heated argument about why
exactly I initially flicked it off. "It sounds like Pavement;
it's derivative," I said, deciding that the rest of the
opinion would write itself in my sleep. My boyfriend brought
up several counter-arguments, including the fact that
derivation doesn't automatically disqualify a record, nor is
it always that easy to prove or assess a band's influences
unless you explicitly know them. But there it was, my learned
bigotry that, while it is acceptable to cite Willie Dixon as
an influence, Stephen Malkmus needs to attain a higher level
of greatness and then die before people should be able to crib
his shit. I can't even explain why I think/thought that. I
picked it up like intellectual crabs. Being impressed and
having bands that push boundaries are certainly opportunities
for music critics to flex, but they aren't necessarily the
best yard sticks for records. Most of this yammering caveat
might mean zilch to you, but I thought I would at least admit
that the reasons I find Garlic
lackluster might be the sorts of things most people don't give
a shit about.
"Kathleen and Marie" screams Pavement,
right down to the way Mike Wyzgowski's voice sounds like it's
going to crack through the sheer implosive force of ironic
indifference. Immediately shifting gears, they whip out a
wallowing wash of steel pedal for a Wilco-lite obsessive love
song called "Never Gonna Let You Go". While every band strives
for a certain level of versatility, there's an equal danger in
frequent genre skimming, which tends to make a band sound
diluted and hollow. I can't help but feel that Garlic have a
general, serviceable "alt-ness" to them that makes all the
songs seem like the kind of Rolex you buy off some street
person who just pushed up their trench coat sleeve. We all own
albums this middling that we never get around to selling
because it's such a close call, and because there's that one
song that sounds like that other band that we
love.
Though Garlic make their home in London, there's
nothing here that would tie them to any particular UK scene.
For that, they certainly deserve credit. "Weird Wood Soul"
stands out as going a long way toward making a sound that
stakes a unique claim. With its soft acoustic layers and
Wyzgowski's sweetly strained chorus of "shake, baby, shake",
it's a straight-ahead ace pop song that gives your tear ducts
a soft pinch. Here, there are no wishy-washy country feints
and no underwhelming rock-outs, just a well-crafted song that
can't be accused of influence
scavenging.
Where their country side sounds like it could stand
to be dug in deeper and more defined, their rock songs skid
out wholly half-assed. "One Think or Another" disintegrates
its riff in sloppy drums, cheaply distorted Strokes vocals,
and comically unaligned keyboard bubbles. It's one of those
songs that just sits in the middle of the record like a turd
on a nicely set dinner table. "Waverly" shoplifts turns of
phrase (the hills of Beverly), affect, and a generally
lumbering fuzzy pace from Pavement to virtually no effect
other than theft recognition. Rather than showcasing range,
asides like this simply act as planks in the indictment that
Garlic haven't made a decision about what band they want to be
or what kind of music to concentrate their efforts on. Not
everyone can be Beck, and for those that can't, hunkering down
and following a few artistic threads doesn't
hurt.
Like I
said earlier, despite my misgivings, I think this album is a
keeper and possibly one that will subtly ingratiate itself
over time. I just wish Garlic's artistic terra firma felt less
like sponge cake, less like buckshot scattered wildly with
only a few tracks squarely, if not accidentally, on the mark.
If someone ever told me I had promise, I'd want to kick their
teeth through their head. In the interests of not being a
hypocrite, I'll just say that Garlic is a wait-and-see band
that could easily stumble onto better things. - Terry Sawyer
Mar 04
americana-uk.com
- Not entirely sure why we’ve just received this five
months on from its release but it’s certainly been worth the
wait – the pure pop and americana hybrid is a rare thing, but
London based Garlic seem to manage it effortlessly with this
their second album, the follow up to 2002’s wonderfully titled
“Murky World of Seats.” Frontman Mike Wyzgowski’s
songwriting has improved, and veering between Jim White and
Mark Linkous type vocals along with a Wilco or Flaming Lips
ear for a good tune, songs like “Never Gonna Let You Go” or
the sardonic “Face Down” are infectious, exciting and full of
indie promise. Great stuff. - MW Feb 04
time off - Underpinned
by moments of subtle focus, Garlic’s latest effort starts with
an organic, acoustic feel, guitars and brushes translating
carefree and almost abstract tales of those searching for love
and others simply holding their
ground.
Mixing punchy
guitar hooks and small crescendos (‘Kathleen & Marie’)
rollicking pop (‘Face Down’) with splashes of keyboards that
grow into a driving groove (‘One Thing Or Another’) and
soothing pedal steel guitar (‘100 Miles’).
The band never
force their sound and songs through the speakers, leaving it
up to us to take them in or let them keep travelling along,
although the pace and volume does increase throughout the
second half of the album.
Not all the
songs have the happiest of topics but that doesn’t really
penetrate, with the music retaining an untroubled feel.
Sounding whimsical at first, Jam Sabbatical gets under
your skin and after a while makes sense, beaming like the sun
after a good summer storm. 3/5 - Carl
Snatch
LOGO - A Weird Wood
Soul single review - Why is it that all the best
bands find themselves on small, under-funded labels with
barely enough resources to do that band justice? It happened
with Nirvana when Sub Pop was but a boy, it happened to
Pavement, it happened to Travis when Independiente didn’t have
the cash to buy good exposure. I know, Travis, but they
offered proof that it doesn’t actually matter what the critics
say, and after ‘The Man Who’ went ballistic more than a few
critics were backpedalling faster than a French onion-seller
careening down a steep hill. If only every band got what they
deserved without having to submit themselves to the
not-so-tender mercies of mass marketing, then bands like
Garlic would be sitting on top the world. Why? Go and find out
for yourself. Suffice to say that Garlic are as fresh as
Nirvana, as accessible as Travis, and far more out there than
Pavement ever managed. It’s an unbeatable combination that
demands your attention, so go and pay your respects. - Suzie Q
Oct 03
UNCUT -
Second LP frm oddball London six-piece, produced by
Lenny (Tricky) Franchi - Rubber-stamped by New Order, Garlic's
2002 debut The Murky World of Seats brought
comparisons with Neil Young and, crucially, Stephen Malkmus.
This time, Pavement passions are (intermittently) dampened for
a broader outlook, though comparisons with The Flaming Lips
("Never Gonna Let You Go"), Grandaddy ("One Thing or Another")
and Lou Reed ("Philmore") are unavoidable. Mostly backlit by
hearty acoustic strum, frontman Mike Wyzgowski's
niftily-skewed songs are best when shorn of affectation, as on
the softly defocused "A Weird Wood Soul" (spot the infamous UK
nanny anagram) and charabanc-a-long "100 Miles". 3/5 - Rob
Hughes Nov 03
CRUD - It's largely been down to the
shuffling lo-fi imaginations of the US that have provided us with the more alternative and diverse
guitar bands of the last 10 years or so:
Pavement, the Pixies, Nirvana, the Flaming Lips - the
list goes on. We in the UK had the passing
phenomenon that was 'Brit Pop', of course
- but contrary to expectations, it didn't 'Live Forever'. And
what do we have to show for it? The Albarn
ego-mobile that is Blur? Glossy and
grossing pub rockers Oasis ? Spare me the details please -
we've got zip to show for it, that's what
we've got. And now we have to suffer a fate far worse than Brit-Pop. We have cultivated with some
skill, the persistent ulcer in our gut
that is Coldplay and Starsailor.
If
this is rock n' roll I'd be prepared to sleep with my own
grandmother for kicks.
So it comes as a pleasant surprise to discover that
British Sea Power are NOT our only hope.
Those pesky, shambolic, bastard creations Garlic are.
Having long since advanced from their
Paul Oakenfold endorsed infancy, the worryingly uneven Mike Wyzgowski and friends have
crafted one of the most unlikely successes
of 2003. It's a little bit kooky, a little bit crazy and
a little bit challenging on the old
cranium - but good golly miss molly, it's
a beaut'.
Opening with the chirping,
wry and acoustic 'A Weird Wood Soul', Garlic usher in an unusually alien dawn; gently picking
guitar, swirling pianos and the frisky,
shuffling rhythm of simple percussion provides the album
with a pant-shittingly fine front
entrance. The Grandaddy inflections on 'Kathleen and Marie' lift it ever so slightly with an
electric, static charge of blues. Think
Roxy Music's Virginia Plain or Pjamarama and mix it
up with a little Pavement and Frank Black.
It's pretty damn close.
With it's
alt-country flavourings and it's pedantic attention to naught,
'Jam Sabbatical' packs and pops some
breezy off-kilter pop nuggets, not least,
'Never Let You Go' and the zany but hugely satisfying if
bizarre, '100 Miles'. 'One Think Or
Another' may drag up the inevitable comparisons to Lou Reed and the Pixies - but it comes at exactly
the right time in the album - at a point
when you were considering swapping your entire record
collection for just this one
album.
Bloody marvellous. That's all I'm
going to say. 5/5 - Alan Sargeant Sept
03 |