So easy for an album to be overlooked these days. Even if you are just an ordinary fan, you have piles of CD’s (still?), vinyl records or files on any number of hard drives begging to be heard to no avail. Maybe one day they do get their turn, only to be sent back to the shadows after a track or two, or they don’t get their chance at all.
Rarely does it happen that an almost forgotten album gets its chance and simply forces you to say, wow, why didn’t I listen to this one before?
So here it is, from ‘way back’ in 2016, almost a full year ago, when Ultimate Painting the London duo of James Hoare and Jack Cooper came up with their third joint album Dusk. And as far as I’m concerned, here comes that ‘wow, why didn’t I listen to this one before?’ thing.
Hoare and Cooper not only made two albums together already before Dusk but were members of Mazes (Hoare and Veronica Falls and Proper Ornaments (Cooper). So the preconditions for something good were already there.
But not really this good. Using that now overused sentence from all those ever-popular cooking shows, ‘keep it simple’, Hoare and Cooper really do so and let all the musical and lyrical elements they employ really shine.
And yes, they are inspired by the sounds that came before them, but if nothing else, they are in no way copycats of anything. Th Sixties are the name of the game with Ultimate Painting, the name itself derived from a psychedelic painting done at the Sixties Drop City commune established in Colorado.
Ultimate Painting uses their big name inspirations wisely (a tune like “Song For Brian Jones should be a clue) and it involves quite a few names on the line from The Beatles harmonies to Velvet Underground and their self-titled third album. Their sound is all half-muted, very intricate jangling guitars and dual harmonies, with all the influences melded carefully together.
And like any carefully crafted medicine, the musical coating brings along some biting lyrics, the introductory “Bills” leading the way (after all, there is a tune named “Lead The Way”), with lyrics also seemingly inspired by the views on life held by the young generation in the Sixties. But then, the times repeat themselves, don’t they?
As for inspiration, the quality of Ultimate Paining’s Dusk has pushed me to dive into that almost forgotten pile at least one more time…
