The Courettes – Back In Mono (Damaged Goods)

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The Courettes present a thoroughly retro and immersive dive back into the period of music when Rock’n’Roll defined itself as an Art Form. This is Brazilian Flavia Couri voice and guitar and Danish Martin Couri drums and percussion. As The Courettes, they are simultaneously a Tribute Band whilst presenting all original songs.

On the cover, Flavia has a massively high beehive bouffant. Martin is holding some shakers. The same layout as Presenting The Ronettes album from 1964.

Back To Mono comes from Phil Spector. The celebrated Wall of Sound was created at the Gold Star Studio in Los Angeles. Into it went the large cast of session musicians known as the Wrecking Crew, many of whom went on to bigger glory…Leon Russell, Sonny and Cher, Glen Campbell, Nino Tempo. Vital to the sound were engineer Larry Levine and arranger Jack Specs Nitzsche.

 Spector was the first to establish the music producer as auteur. In the same way movie producers are regarded. A very good but not great Jazz guitarist and a fine songwriter. He wrote, sang on and produced To Know Him is to Love Him while still at high school and took it to number one in 1958.

Popular history may still say that Rock’n’Roll ran out of steam when Elvis entered the Army and Buddy Holly died in a plane crash. And only returned with Beatlemania in America 1964.

The opposite is the truth. The rise of the Girl Groups led by Spector is what sits at the heart and soul of Rock’n’Roll to this day.

The Courettes have put a lot of work into this labour of love. Getting a lot of the analog equipment together. This was recorded in their home country Denmark. The third essential member being producer Soren Christensen. Contributes piano, keyboards and mellotron. They went to a music obsessive in Japan to mix it to that classic sound, Seike Sato.

Want You! Like a Cigarette. Muddy Sixties Garage Rock grunge. They love the Sonics and you can check out their song Psycho as an example of white suburban youth doing Little Richard.

The Rolling Stones inspired the first wave of American Garage. Then came the Yardbirds. Spector was around in the studio when the Stones were laying down their debut album. He got to add some percussion and backing vocals as Uncle Phil.

I Can Hardly Wait. This is the Gold Star sound in full flight now. Proto-Surf guitar and the deep cavernous drums kick in. Those signature castanets. It sounds like an electric bass is matching and folding in to the kick-drum.

Hey Boy. Give me a kiss before you go. The attitude is early Shangri-La’s. Love songs which sound like combat and full of fury. Mono can also mean monolithic. The fuzzed grime here may be from the compression of sound. What Motown used through most of the Sixties to sound spectacular on tinny little radios.

Night Time (The Boy of Mine). A little borrowed from the Strangeloves Night Time. The piano here is the same style that Roy Bittan plays with the E-Street Band.

R.I.N.G.O. is one of the triumphs on the album. Simple chords and a great drum lead. A Bo Diddley rhythm from deep inside. The Beatles first album Please Please Me was also an homage to the Girls Groups. Lennon and McCartney were aiming to emulate their songwriting idols Gerry Goffin and Carole King.

They put some primitive Surf guitar noise on Until you Were Mine and Trash Can Honey. Merging Garage with Girl Group to come up with a hybrid early Punk sound. A brutal rhythm riff on Honey and you can search out a very early Shangri-La’s single Simon Says for the inspiration.

Hop the Twig. Guitar plays some heavy twang and wet reverb. Garage heading toward Cramps territory and the singer gets wild and wobbly. A custom-built Tarantino vehicle.

Go to the single of Twig and check out Only Happy When You’re Gone. Done in the style of the Ronettes Baby I Love You.

My One and Only Baby and Too Late to Say I’m Sorry. They give space to the music in the production. This adds depth to the cavernous drums and you get the percussion highlights. The trademark wo-oh-oh-oh-oh chorus. The Crystals sound with LaLa Brooks on my favourite Girl Group song Then He Kissed Me.

When you have listened to it many thousands of times you can hear the pressure wave just before the sound hits. The opening bells in the first few seconds are really the sound of God hitting the Earth and the Earth hitting back as Spector may have said.      

Cry Cry Cry ends the album with a ballad. Perfect echo production and a slow melancholy vocal that builds in power. Some artillery drum fire signals the introduction of a little of Darlene Love’s He’s Sure the Boy I Love.

The Courettes make a great tribute album of all-original material. To an era and a body of work that is timeless and will continue to inspire the best Rock’n’Roll Artists.

Rev Orange Peel       

Click here to watch the 13th Floor MusicTalk interview with The Courettes

Click here for more of The Courettes

 

          

          

 

Rev Orange Peel
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