Los Angelenos Radar Bros' new album is no great departure from their two previous self-titled LPs, simply more of Jim Putnam's sad-eyed mopes. With melodies owing as much to the sweetest psychedelia as to country, Putnam manages to wrench a strangely uplifting melancholy from these songs of remorse and regret. He is at his most sublime when charting the bleakest hours of the soul; driven by slow, brushing drums, ghostly synths and chiming guitar, songs like Find The Hour and Open Ocean Sailing are subtly annihilating. [9/10]
The Guardian - 17th September, 1999
Released in early 1996, Radar Bros' impossibly perfect debut LP said seemingly everything that could be said about the vacant stares and sweet minor chords which wander between Leonard Cohen's Songs From A Room and Neil Young's After The Goldrush. It's 1997 follow-up painted the same territory by numbers, and couldn't even be bothered to masquerade under a new title, but this is better. The Bros always work within a formula - slo-mo melodies to stare out of a bus window to and nowhere-dude lyrics, combined with the inability to complete a sentence in under three minutes. If you've heard one song, you've basically heard them all, but it's an extremely pretty, spaced-out, fragile song. [4/5]
MOJO - October 1999
Return of the introspective musos from Silverlake - Beck and Eels country.
If, like me, you are the proud owner of the band's exquisite self-titled 1996 album you may have wondered what happened to the critically acclaimed trio. Nutshelled, their record label went under, Jim Putnam spent three years writing new songs, recording them in his garage with long-time colleagues Steve Goodfriend and Senon Williams, until Chemikal Underground (Mogwai, Delgados) signed them. Where the last album drifted effortlessly between Neil Young-esque slo-core and prog-pop, here - the odd, slow, jangly guitar on The Pilgrim or the weary road song Five Miles aside - they've headed towards the latter, with several cuts sounding like variations on the theme of the last album's elegiac closing track Goddess, a kind of Americana take on early Pink Floyd. Which makes for a floaty, mellifluous, sweetly drifting album anchored by solid, melodic and marvellously executed songs.
SYLVIE SIMMONS
NME - 4th September, 1999
Brutal and merciful. Sharp and clean as a blade. For three years, Radar Bros have been quietly honing the follow-up to their fragile first LP, rebuilding their foundations after a disintegrating record label left them in freefall. It's no surprise that their toil has been embraced by Chemikal Underground, for here are songs of imperturbable poise and majestical sadness.
Radar Bros may share a certain attitude with other bands on CU's roster, yet it's the taut and lashing beauty of fellow Americans The Webb Brothers that 'The Singing Hatchet' most resembles. This is because Radar Bros (who are not, incidentally, brothers at all) are drawing from the same well of inspiration as winsome Webbs - namely 'Revolver'-era Beatles, Neil Young, Big Star. Yet, out of these somewhat hackneyed prototypes, Radar Bros have fashioned something uncommonly vibrant.
Most remarkable is the album's sophisticated minimalism. Just as opener 'Tar The Roofs' glides along on a warm hum of acoustic guitar and stray piano, the 11 songs that follow are wound tightly around intimate harmonies and judicious percussion. But though the musical span may be slim, the emotional breadth is gaspingly vast.
In an age dominated by technology, it's easy to forget that cathedrals were built with only the simplest of tools. Radar Bros offer us a humble reminder. [8/10]
APRIL LONG
Uncut - October 1999
Slowcore troubadour's quietly magnificent comeback.
After three years in limbo, Jim Putnam's second Radar Bros album is a soothing treat for the ears. With his spectral falsetto and spooked, slow-motion snap-shots of backwoods Americana, Putnam inhabits some melancholy quadrant of New Country-tinged lo-fi somewhere between Will Oldham's quavering ballads and Mercury Rev's melting pastoral symphonies. Indeed, 'Shovelling Sons' would not feel out of place on Deserter's Songs, although celestial shimmers such as 'You're An Island' and 'Open Ocean Sailing' are pure Putnam one-offs. A beautiful, luminous, quietly transcendent record. [4/5]
Early references: Neil Young, Galaxie 500, Jeff Buckley
Contemporary references: Low, Palace Brothers, Mercury Rev
STEPHEN DALTON