Album Review: The Gold Needles – What’s Tomorrow Ever Done For You? (JEM)

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Power Pop Yorkshire band The Gold Needles time-travel back to England of the mid-Sixties when The Beatles were re-inventing popular music from the inside.

Their take on If I Needed Someone sits bang in the middle of their album and seems to be the pulsing beat and spiritual core of this music. Faithful to the original. A smooth wave of meshed sound with Eastern tones popping up in the mix.

That propulsive and seductive drive opens the album with the title track, What’s Tomorrow Ever Done for You?  Listen to them back-to-back and they seem to blend together. The Sixties blossoming out to Flower Power, Hippies, psychedelia and transcendental meditation. Without the strife and social upheaval.

I Get the Pressure and Precious Times continue in that vein. Sunny, spacious and sparkling music. Hook-laden and clean lines of melody. Nice ensemble vocals smooth and affectless, like the early Byrds. Could be double-tracked.

Have You Ever Loved Somebody? Again, no different to the versions of the Hollies and the Searchers. They come on like a tribute band, and I admit to having a soft spot for those where others turn their noses up in disdain.

They put more into the cover of The Sounds Counting the Days. The keyboards thread a continuous melody throughout which builds into a euphoric Pop drone. Intro riff and the singing of Simon Dowson especially echoes Morrissey and Marr. Both those bands were active at the same time in the wake of UK New Wave.

That Smiths tone is to the fore in the guitar intro to Billy Liar. Nice rhythm riff throughout. Vocal style and lyrics from the Who/Kink’s songbook of 1966. They really are a Sixties tribute band.

That’s why Dead Man’s Hands is a nice change of pace with some Blues lead guitar lines. A gamblers story out of Deadwood. Dylan wordplay filtered through the Folk Rock of the Byrds.

1967 followed and along came Sgt Pepper and Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd. Realm of the Black Dog is Prog-Rock. Spacey, dream-like keyboards with sound effects. The volume increases with jagged riffs which open out into a nicely woven guitar solo.

Nostalgic music bright and shiny. Taps into the transformative power of the great Mid-Sixties music and is salute to spirit when the mood could be much worse, with the shutting down of so much normal human behaviour of this year past. Tomorrow never knows what tomorrows ever done for you.

Rev Orange Peel

Click here to watch the 13th Floor MusicTalk interview with The Gold Needles.

   

      

 

 

Rev Orange Peel
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