A dream is a wish your heart makes

By Henry Lipput

Dreamers On The Run, the new album by BMX Bandits (Tapete Records), with its wonderful arrangements of instruments and both backing and choral voices, is, in many ways, the band’s Pet Sounds. (Need convincing? Check out the stereo mix of Pet Sounds created for the Pet Sounds Sessions box set in 1997.) “I am dreaming all the time/Not just when I’m asleep” sings lead Bandit Duglas T Stewart on the opening track and title song. Dreamers On The Run is full of tales of dreams achieved, hoped for, and sometimes dashed.

In my review of “Setting Sun,” the first single from the album, I referred to it as “jaunty pop.” Both it and the next song on Dreamers On The Run, “Time To Get Away,” are about dream vacations, whether real or imagined, and contain this type of uplifting vibe.  On initial listen so does “Hop Skip Jump (For You Love” with its Bo Didley riff.  But sometimes in a relationship, no matter how hard one tries, you don’t make the grade. “My best was never good enough/I go so far to win your love” – so “I’m sick and tired of running after you.” 

On the segue that connects “Time To Get Away” and “What He Set Out To Be” we hear the tide that has washed away the dreams of the man in this song. “He thought too much of himself/And not enough of she/He can’t replace her smiles/Not if he walked a million miles.” Both musically and lyrically it can remind you of a Ray Davies song from mid-period Kinks, as this sad and lonely man may be the figure watching lovers crossing Waterloo Bridge each evening to meet.

With “My Name Is Duglas (Don’t Listen To What They Say)” one is also reminded of The Kinks, this time from their Schoolboys in Disgrace album. The voices that introduce “Jack The Idiot Dunce” have the same dismissive tone of people who have no regard for others who are different. The BMX Bandits track gives both Duglas and Jack a chance to respond to the haters.