Album Notes

More evidence that it's what's lurking beneath the radar that's really important, Brady Harris - following the familiar career trajectory of starving busker (in London and Paris), accidental recordings, critical acclaim (not the least of which came at the NxNW conference in '99) impressive underground success ($5000 from MP3.com) and still no major label deal - has just released his third album, recorded at home with the assistance of a $500 Shure microphone he won for his roots-grass version of Motorhead's 'Ace Of Spades'. Intrigued? Good, for mere words can never do him justice. Ignore, then, the fact that Harris' voice bears comparisons with John Lennon; ignore the fact that he creates a beguiling brand of alt. power country pop, something like Peter Bruntnell massaging Big Star; ignore the fact that Harris can take on Joe Pernice in his own back yard and win. Ignore these words, let your ears do the judging, and you're left wondering where this California-dwelling Texan has been hiding all your life.

-Michael Ornadet, LOGO-MAGAZINE (UK)
(reviewing "LONE STAR")

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Well Known Songs Get A Much Needed Makeover

Cover records that take obscure songs and bring them to a new audience are easy enough to assess; one like this one that takes on popular songs that are the wallpaper of the everyday are harder because it is difficult to distance yourself from the original and judge the cover and not just the song or how it has sounded on the 3,000 other occasions when you’ve heard it without wanting to and perhaps without really listening. What Harris has managed to do is not to shake the songs up too much; instead he dresses them in a new suit of clothes and makes them as respectable as they can be.

Taking on the Beatles (and by implication – Oasis) is an easy task for him; his own work is informed by them and with ‘Girl’ he holds the song respectfully and guides it in a swooning waltz. His vocals are spot on and the flecks of banjitar help him lay claim to the song. Many of the other versions build on this same template, converting into the Harris house style; thus he makes the Vines ‘Highly Evolved’ into a gently barrelling piano lament.

Stripping back even more layers for ‘Like a Virgin’ with just guitar bass and drums he sensibly resists any attempt at celebration and takes a modulated tender approach. Who knew that ‘Rio’ just needed some pedal steel, though here the lyrics defeat his attempt to take the song seriously. He’s on much firmer ground with ‘Smile Like You Mean It’ where the pedal steel sounds like it always should have been there.

Strangely ‘Ace of Spades’ sounds like it was made for mandolin, ukulele and pedal steel; his treatment claims the song, though gambling has always been a staple of country music. The version of ‘Spanish Bombs’ is excellent and the medley of ‘I Want You to Want Me / Surrender / Do You Really Want to Hurt Me’ is a seamless acoustic mash-up.

The strength and weakness of these versions is that Harris has selected a diverse range of songs and subjects them all to pretty much the same treatment, which works in binding the songs together coherently but results in a kind of sameness throughout. I’d like to have seen him take a few more risks.

-David Cowling, Americana-UK