When it comes to pop/rock comparatives, three always get my attention: Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, Tom Petty. Atlanta transplant Joe Rathbone occasionally sounds like an amalgam of the three. His music unites top-shelf hook-a-minute pop songwriting and a pleasing soulful voice. The sensitive-guy vocal chops include liberal use of falsetto that adds moments of call-and-response or ear-catching tonal color a la Brian Wilson.
While there is a certain sentimental façade, producer David Henry manages to keep the arrangements firmly locked into rock grooves, and the result is an album on which every song sounds like an adult alternative radio single. Rathbone’s modus operandus is the intimate conversational touch, but beefy grooves and the crunchy ring in his electric guitar keep the music from swerving across that deadly saccharin center stripe.
Songs such as “Learning To Fly” and “You Make The World Go Round” make it no stretch to believe Rathbone is a former wedding singer turned music teacher, while “Take Me With You” rocks hard and shows he can spin an edgy hipster tale when he’s not in love song mode: “I heard you found a brand new spaceship/I heard you blasted off last night/Wherever you may travel wasted/Take me with you every time.”
The incredibly catchy “Everything’s About To Be Beautiful” is a cutting snarled-lip narrative that would fit seamlessly into Costello’s classic This Year’s Model: “You spent seven years workin’ on a brand new style/Big bad eyes, big bad beautiful smile/Everything’s about to be beautiful.” Just more pure pop for now people.
