Steve Conte, Andy Partridge, and Record Store Day

By Henry Lipput

Steve Conte’s new album The Concrete Jangle (Wicked Cool Records) is being released this Saturday on Record Store Day! So find a store here and get there early!

New York-based rocker Conte has worked with The New York Dolls and Michael Monroe and for The Concrete Jangle he has joined forces with Andy Partridge of XTC and, most recently, last year’s The 3 Clubmen EP. Conte and Partridge co-wrote the five songs on side one of the album and Conte went it alone for the five songs on side two. “I knew they’d have to stand up next to the Partridge co-writes,” said Conte in the album’s press materials about the songs on the flip side, “so I pulled some of the more psychedelic, adventurous, soulful songs from the Beatles/XTC/Motown side of my musical brain.”

The Concrete Jangle kicks off with the lead track and the first single from the album “Fourth of July.” The song is a burst of pop goodness and although it has trademark Partridge lyrical flourishes Conte brings the vocal and guitar licks for which he is known to make the song his own.

“Hey Hey Hey (Aren’t You The One”) starts off with a guitar riff reminiscent of Wasp Star’s “Playground” and continues with more riffs, a clean, melodic guitar solo, and some neat farfisa organ fills. And then there’s Partridge in love-struck mode: “Aren’t you the one/The one set to stun/Zap my heart just for fun/Are you the one.” Partridge was given co-producer credit for the co-writes and this is most apparent on “One Last Bell” a song whose arrangement recalls XTC songs like “The Last Balloon” and “Harvest Festival.”

Side two is all Conte all the time. Highlights (and there are many) include “All Tied Up.” It’s a cool tune about the many faces of love and features a terrific vocal from Conte as well as some of the best guitar work on the album (and there are handclaps!). “Girl With No Name” is a power pop treat with a tune and arrangement that could have been a mid-Sixties AM radio hit (and might just be one now on the interwebs radio).

Conte also said in the press materials that he told Partridge that for one of the songs “we should put on our Dukes of Stratosphere hats.” I don’t think any of the co-writes on side one of The Concrete Jangle fit that description but one of the songs on side two, “Decomposing A Song For You” is just that. It may be my favorite song on the album. Conte has rummaged through the Beatles side of his brain to fit together a “Penny Lane”-like piano, "Walrus" strings, and treated vocal and used the ingredients to bake a Dukes-like treat. And there’s even a bit of sitar at the very end!

They just don’t make them like this anymore

By Henry Lipput

In May of 1967 Syd Barrett, Marianne Faithful, and George Martin booked time in Trident Studios in London. Throughout the summer, recording under the name The 3 Clubmen to avoid prying eyes and ears, the trio created four complete tracks in between their regular sessions with other artists. Released a few months after the juggernaut of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the four-song EP sunk without a trace.

Obviously, none of this ever happened but The 3 Clubmen is a real thing. Today it’s not Barrett, Faithful, and Martin but another musical powerhouse trio in Andy Partridge, Jen Olive, and Stu Rowe. Their self-titled EP (Burning Shed) is the kind of musically inventive and downright fun collection of songs that you just don’t hear much anymore; it’s the kind of thing the trio I made up in the opening paragraph of this review might have put together.

This current day trio made their first appearance when the first single from the EP, “Aviatrix,” was announced back in the Spring (a few weeks ago a glorious pop-art style video was released). In my review of the song I called it “mind-bending” and this also applies to the paint-splattering way all of these songs have been put together; there’s nothing in these songs that’s expected. 

Both Partridge and Olive provide alternating vocals on “Aviatrix” as well as on the lovely, very Partridge “Green Green Grasshopper.” Like a finger-picked folk song for children it’s the tale of a request for a grasshopper to take a journey to deliver a message of love. But there are dangers along the way: “take care you’re not breakfast for a bird in the sky” but more importantly when the destination is reached (there may have been a breakup or a misunderstanding between the lovers) “make note if there’s a Spring-time thunder look in her eye.” This grasshopper saga seems made for a children’s book or an animated short.

Olive sings lead on both “Racecar” and “Look at Those Stars” and both are about the ways someone handles down turns in their lives.

“I am blue/What should I do?” asks Olive in “Racecar.” The answer, at least for now, is to engage with a bit of conspicuous consumption: “You need to buy yourself a racecar baby.” The song has a metronome-like interplay of guitar and drums along with occasional spooky piano fills.

“Look at Those Stars” is the most accessible, out-and-out pop song on the EP (which is why it’s probably my favorite). It also provides a natural – as in nature – answer to the blues. “I’ve got the kind of blues/Don’t ever go away,” sings Olive, “I’ve got the kind of dues/I always got to pay.” The solution is to look skyward and there’s a joyful lyrical outburst reinforced by the sound of steel drums: “But hey!/Would you look at those stars/Nothing more beautiful!”

Flying high with the 3 clubmen

 By Henry Lipput

“Aviatrix,” the mind-bending first single by The 3 Clubmen from their self-titled EP out in June (Burning Shed/Lighterthief), is a love story made up of sounds and images that might, under normal circumstances, not work together. But these aren’t normal circumstances because The 3 Clubmen is the brand-new powerhouse musical trio of Andy Partridge, Jen Olive, and Stu Rowe.

Partridge, Olive, and Rowe have been working on projects since 2008 (Rowe and Partridge worked on 2oo7's Monstrance and Olive’s 2013 album The Breaks had all three of them on separate tracks performing separate tasks).  But The 3 Clubmen is the first time they’ve recorded as a proper trio. 

As for the process of making the new EP, Partridge said: “I throw paint, Jen throws paint, Stu throws paint...and we walk away. If, when we return, something in there calls to us, we’ll move heaven and earth to get it out and let it breath.” The result with “Aviatrix” may initially appear to be two separate songs but put together they complement each other not unlike Wasp Star’s “The Wheel and The Maypole” (or going even further back “A Day in The Life”).  And the paint on the walls must have stuck because the colors are so fresh you can smell them.