Based around the talented songwriting partnership of Ramy Antoun (drums, percussion, moog etc) and the mysterious Siddhartha (vocals, guitars, bass, keyboards etc), LA'S GOLDSPOT have made an album stuffed with accomplished, well-produced guitar pop that could certainly hold its' own in the mainstream.
The bizarrely-titled "Tally Of The Yes Men" is especially strong as it comes out of the traps. Songs like the driving opener "Rewind", "Friday" and the determined "Time Bomb" demonstrate Goldspot can cope admirably with mature, urgent power pop and a variety of moods. They recall a range of contemporaries - Spoon on "Rewind", The National on "Time Bomb" - pretty favourably, with Siddhartha's vocal timbre occasionally bringing Grant McLennan to mind.
They can also draw blood when they sink their teeth into more experimental tracks, as the likes of "The Guard" and "Cusp" ably prove. The former features acoustic guitar, lonely droplets of piano, loops and what could well be a mellotron before culminating in a refrain ("call off the guard!") reminiscent of Thom Yorke. "Cusp", meanwhile, opens with low-key loops, drunken drums tripping over themselves and goes on to mainline on atmosphere. Both are pretty good, and are arguably bettered in the home strait by the dark beauty of the valedictory piano ballad "In The Post" which nas echoes of under-rated singer/ songwriter Chris Mills.
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More of this and "Tally Of The Yes Men" would really be an achievement, but there are also significant chunks of the album where Goldspot's desire to experiment finds them coming unstuck. Sometimes - like on "The Feel Good Program Of The Year" - they get away with it thanks to the melancholic edge of Siddhartha's voice, though even he can't save a generic chugger such as "It's Getting Old" or the token sparse acoustic track "So Fast", which strives for Radiohead/ Coldplay-style gravitas and simply falls at the first hurdle and brings your reviewer to his knees as even Siddhartha finally succumbs to 'doing a Chris Martin' with the falsetto inflections. Enough already!
So while "Tally Of The Yes Men" basks in talent and quality performances, it's sometimes too fussy and desperate to bask in eclecticism to really score emotionally. Nonetheless, it's a decent listen, stands on its' own two feet for the most part and makes a defiant fist of this edgy pop malarkey. We may yet hear more from them.
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