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Review: 'Valentine, Marc'
'Future Obscure'   

-  Label: 'Arcane Wires Records/Bandcamp'
-  Genre: 'Pop' -  Release Date: '8.7.22.'-  Catalogue No: 'AWCD20222'

Our Rating:
Future Obscure is the first solo album by Marc Valentine from The Last Great Dreamers mainly written during lockdown and recorded and produced by Dave Draper whose also one of the bands guitarists along with Marc himself and Richard Davies and special guest Wreckless Eric as well as Steve Fielding, Denley Slade, Tim Emery and Matt Dangerfield etc. The albums title is knowing as Last Great Dreamers have made loads of Obscure classics here's hoping this album is more the well-known classic it deserves to be.

The album bursts out the speakers with Last Train Tonight a great rush of a song, trying to make sure you catch that last train home, with some crisp drumming and some catchy lyrics as well as of course some cool guitars from Richard Davies, Marc Valentine and Dave Draper.

Swiss Launderette is a tale of despair and well hope, to convince a very nice girl to be his, as he tries to stay in the Swiss Launderette on a freezing night with a searing guitar solo and some fairground keyboards.

Mornington Avenue is a glam stomp about being young and up to no good in Camden back when Marc was young and finding himself, this has a very brief clash style Dub break of no more than 10 seconds that just notes a slight shift in the song, this is a great pop punk song.

Linear Slopes was written with Wreckless Eric who shares vocals as well as playing guitar percussion and vocoder, this is far more angular sounding, with the bass doing all sorts of stuff, loads of vocal effects on the backing vocals, as it motors along like they are swinging between the uppers and downers.

Fade Out In Blue slows things down and sounds a bit like The One Peter Perrett's first solo band with some lovely slow jangly guitars and some quite spacey Theremin.

Break My Heart Anyway is exactly the kind of heartbreaker you'd expect it to be, with all the hurt feelings and bitter twisted angst over someone you would rather was still in love with you on a corking power pop song.

Arcades has Seagulls flying over head circling, as your hanging by the Arcades, looking for some action, everything goes around once more, you hear those three guitars fighting for your attention and affections, there's plenty going on with the twanging guitars and a nice chiming ending.

Broken Satellites struts across the speakers with a snarl and lyrics that seem to tell a pained tale of love and drugs and fun and games.

Ghosts Of Amsterdam is quite fast for a song set in Amsterdam, as they exorcize demons of Amsterdam past with some sophisticated power pop guitars, that make this sound like an instant classic.

Death Is Overrated, is the second song that features Wreckless Eric, it's really a song for our death riddled times, as this dark tale of escape from the clutches of death slowly unfolds, like some long lost Mott The Hoople classic and lets all make sure to live before we die.

Zodiac Hotel is about trying to avoid being involved in the bad scenes he knows will happen if he has to go back to the Zodiac Hotel once more, it sounds like a properly sleazy scene.

The album closes with Electric Chains and they are trying to throw those chains off with some electric blues guitar and I love the way the keyboards work under the guitar on one last future cult classic tune.

Find out more at https://www.facebook.com/marcvalentinemusicartist https://linktr.ee/MarcValentine?fbclid=IwAR3aHlrD7vFec-ZdXCU_6SeoS-4z-oHazV7kfackg_zil5pM2MPOTjdkkW4 https://marcvalentine.bandcamp.com/releases




  author: simonovitch

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