Well - just got the CD in my hands yesterday - took me almost 3 years to catch up with Marc - so, I apologize - I have the entire Teamaker collection now - as far as I know - another perfect addition - smooth as smooth can be - one of my favourite "indie" songwriters in a major way - Alex Stangl
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Firstly may I declare that I don't give 5 out of 5 as nothing is perfect... BUT This is a VERY high 4 star rating. SUNDAY'S COMING ON introduces us to the album the same way Marcs previous offering (Empress Polecat) did with this upbeat summer shimmering song. We are then taken on a trip to MONTREAL with this jazzy flute speckled song about a vacation in (suprisingly) Montreal. WEATHERVANE leads us into track 3, one of the strongest songs on this album and indeed the Teamaker catalogue, the song soars and flows over the listener with a fluidity that relaxes. WHATEVER HAPPENS is another upbeat feeling song with some nice organ playing and a chorus that you won't stop singing. HOLD ME places perspective into place when you hear the haunting strings drifting in and the lyrics touching almost on desperation for love that we all need. Suddenly it's night time, and we are in an underground jazz bar with JELLY JAR #2, saxophone fills break through this sparsely arranged song taking again into a new direction. A latin feel starts this song named DORIAN and has a beat that you can't help but tap a foot along to. VACANT FOOTSTEPS reaches louder than anything else on the album and has an amazing impact within the first 10 seconds, the volume swelled guitars sounding almost like a cello at times. Onwards we stroll to most possibly the best song on the entire album, SOUL BURST is an acoustic song that slowly rises and rises to an exhilarating guitar solo with the vocals oozing emotion. THE SHADE OF TREES is a funky feeling Saxophone boogie that passes over us leaving a smile. Quiet and stillness are represented with AS FOR THE TIME, flute softly tip-toeing around the vocal like a fictional fairy a beautiful song that brings us to WHERE YOUR LUCK LANDS with it's European feel and great vocal delivery a song that lulls us into a false sense of security before we reach a CHANGE that flips us back to the blues/jazz style that the album has at it's centre, guitar fills bounce off bass fills as the organ holds a groove, a great ending to a greater album.
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If Empress Polecat set out the stall for the new phase of Marc's songwriting, then this opens it for business. Usually eponymous titles suggest an artist hasn't been able to come up with a title for their disc, but in this case it is totally justified. Marc opens the door and lets us into his head, sometimes alarmingly so. 

 The disc could be summed up in the words engraved on the back cover, 'Change is the only sound' which he also sneers in a tense spaced out performance of his song Change at the end of the disc. 

  Indeed, apart from changes in music the lyrics have come even more personalin the nature of his lyrics; this is a man concious of time slipping away, of frustration that life can't go to any kind of plan, that we're all tied to petty tasks in concrete jungles, that love can have horrible downs as well as glorious ups. 

  As for the music, this is the most diverse, yet strangely also the most coherent set of arrangements Marc has come up wioth to date. Gone are the flecks of country and in are the influences Marc has so long made public. The travelogue of Montreal is set to an airy acid jazz arrangement, aided by Ali Reyerson on flute, who also adds a gentle flute to As For The Time. This track, along with Hold Me, with its sublime string arrangement, both have a feel of the Island artist of the early seventies, and are deeply touching. Speaking of which, have a look at Soul Burst, which features one of Marc's best vocal performances. Bear bones  here, just piano and guitar. There's also some seedy NYC jazz in here with Jelly Jar #2 (Marc using the Nick Drake trick of using one line in a lyric to base a new song around, rather than a Paul Weller trick of writing the same song with different lyrics) and Change. 

  Please don't think that this album is all down though! Whatever Happens rollocks along at a cracking pace with Marc pulling off the impossible task of making him playing all the instruments sound like a band jamming spontaneously, Vacant Footsteps is one of Marc's best rockers and has Ray Hermann's best drum performances to savour. Where Your Luck Lands nods towards America, but is one of the most perfect individual songs on the album, breezy, accoustic and fun. A personal favourite would have to be The Shade of Trees, a musical nod to Stevie Wonder, funky, fantastically loose, and following the yearning of Sunday's.. for a simpler time and place. 

  This was a tricky album to put together, so I gather, but the effort pays off. One of my absolute favourite albums of the moment. Look out for more soon!
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A definite step into new territory for Teamaker, this album grooves along on a 70's trip that you just can't get over. It oozes class and style and the lyrical content has changed to a mature style... yet not in a bad way, still interesting lyrically as it is musically the self titled album has it all and then some. I wonder to myself whether or not Mr T will tour this one around?
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