Maybe this is exactly what I needed. Maybe what I needed to get me off of the snide and back into this rockwrite gig after a few years of wandering and wondering why I ever did it in the first place was a record so BIG, so nostalgic, so silly (yet so serious), so naive, and so audacious as to channel Bono, Jesus of Dublin whilst paying homage to Jimmy Davis all in the lead track on their debut album...

Maybe...

But in love I am. And all the common rockroll sense left in my brain can’t figure out, for the life of me, a reason why.

"Liar, liar, liar, liar, liar, liar pants on fire" sings Glasvegas lead singer/songwriter James Allan in a strained Scottish brogue during the early middle of "It’s My Own Cheating Heart that Makes Me Cry". It’s a childish line, a cliche that is followed by a barrage of other cliche’s all posing as lyrics. The words, in this setting - the band’s glorious, elegiac, and beautifully bombastic new wave pop musical styling - come across as outlandish and damn near offensive, like an enormous pus-filled zit on the tip of a nose of a beautiful young girl. But Allan is sincere, downright earnest in fact. The song’s protagonist (Allan himself?) is a scoundrel, a cheat who, when caught, retreats into hollow slogans of self pity and the trite platitudes that fake a begging of forgiveness. Allan clearly doesn’t like the character that’s singing the song, and his vocals convey a sharp mocking tone that eventually gives way to pity, but never understanding. It’s a pure moment - as innocent, straightforward, and as simple as the 80's new wave derived music that pours itself out across the entire disc.

"If you’re hung up on nostalgia, pretend today is yesterday and go out and have one hell of a time" - Art Buchwald

"I don’t like nostalgia, unless its my own." - Lou Reed

Nostalgia. God I hate that fucking word. I guess I feel like the past has already been lived and generally I don’t want to have much to do with it considering there is often another tomorrow on its way. I could give a rat’s ass about reliving any previous moment of my life. What’s done is done. Over is over. Gone is gone. I don’t care much for photographs, yearbooks, sentimental objects, or anything of that ilk. It all just seems so...so...sordid in many, many ways to me - like visiting the grave of your own past. Dead days. Decaying memories. Lost shreds of a life viewed through a dreamy prism of wishful memories. Nostalgia and sentimentality seem to move us farther away from the life we still have to live and closer to our own spiritual and physical death.

Heavy shit to be talking about in a review of a power new wave pop revival record to be sure, but address it I must because the struggle here is about whether it’s the deep familiarity in the wonderful sounds of this Glasvegas debut (and there is much familiarity) that stir me or is it something altogether new. In other words, am I being a sap for something - a sound here - that I was once so very fond of, or am I appreciating Glasvegas’ nod to the past while they actually forge something new out of so many recycled bits and pieces?

The very first reaction one has is to Allan’s Bono-esque vocal grandeur after a low crescendoing drone gets shattered by a HUGE drumbeat at the front end of "Flowers & Football Tops". "Babyyy" he bellows, his vocal echoed in Spector-ian call and response fashion with an "Uh ohhhhhhh", "why you not home yet?" The whole thing feels as dramatic as any U2 epic adventure into obviousness but quickly gives way to a chugging Jesus and Mary Chain drive while delivering a heart wrenching song about a father greeted at his front door by police officers with the worst sort of news imaginable; his son is dead ("My baby is six feet under / just another number / my daughter without her brother"). The upbeat and energetic music dies itself and drifts off into a wind of distortion at the end of the track as Allan quietly sings the familiar ballad "You Are My Sunshine". It’s moving, terrific stuff. Stuff that hasn’t, despite the musical approach, a goddamn thing to do with nostalgia.

And the formula carries well throughout the record. James Allan handles a series of obvious and, on paper at least, sometime seemingly silly emotions with a razor sharp and deft touch. "Daddy’s Gone", sung from the perspective of a child whose father is leaving the family, goes quickly from pleading (please don’t go) to disdainful and dismissive ("I won’t be the lonely one / sitting on my own and sad...forget your dad / he’s gone"). Ringing guitars (again, distortion free Jesus and Mary Chain moves) lead into "Geraldine" - "I will be the angel on your shoulder / My name is Geraldine, I’m your social worker / I see you / need me / I know you do" - a song about a fucking social worker! Naive? I’d say hardly in these times. Fuck sentimentality, we’re too far down now.

But to simply listen to Glasvegas is to initially get caught up in the powerful sense that some where John Hughes’ movie soundtracking career is rolling the fuck over in its grave. It’s all here: drips of the Furs; drops of Echo and the Bunnymen; splats of Big Country (minus the bagpipe mimicking guitar); bits of The Proclaimers (sans the quirky stupidity); and, shards and shreds of damn near every year the 1980's produced. There is a "rah-rah" feel to the songs, a sense that - talk about naive - the underdog can still win in this world. And somehow, between the band recreating familiar sounds and playing their collective asses off and Jame Allan pouring himself into every word he sings with a conviction rarely heard in rockroll these days, Glasvegas makes you believe. Believe in tomorrow. Believe in not memories but the possibilities that the past gives to an uncertain future.

And yeah, call me old, but I’m a sucker for that sort of thing these days...

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