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The Elvis Brothers - Adventure Time

The Elvis Brothers are a new-to-me experience. I'm trying to remember how this came to be on my radar. I suspect it was the result of hearing the name mentioned by my friend Jeff  - who has an encyclopedic knowledge of all things pop, which kind of irritates me, to be honest, because I'm older than he is and it gets up my crack that he's more than my equal when it comes to the accumulation of useless trivia regarding music - and then looking them up on the internet and seeing Adrian Belew's name associated.

Rambling Tangent Alert:
Adrian Belew first came to my attention back in 1983, when a wonderful young lady said my homemade DIY "albums" reminded her of Adrian Belew in their quirkiness. To me this was incredibly intriguing, so I rushed out and purchased Twang Bar King and Lone Rhino and quickly discovered that my friend was being overly generous, as those two albums were life-changing and expanded my musical palate beyond anything else I'd ever heard to that point.
End of Tanget - but not the Rambling

It's always a weird and strangely wonderful thing to discover new old things. When they suck, or are just a giant sack of "meh," it's no big deal - you can understand why you never heard of it. But when you discover a quirky gem that you know fit perfectly into the time it came from, you have to wonder why things never clicked. I'm just happy to have found a copy.

The album cover is pure cheese, the best kind. Back in the mid-80s, this seemed to be the stock-in-trade of pop acts around the world, from Katrina and the Waves to Bananarama, and a year later the Stones' Dirty Work would use the same colourful motif. Ah, the 80s - they were the best of times.

The band was tight AF* too - brothers Brad, Rob, and Graham Elvis seemed to share a performers' psychic bond not seen since the Dionne quintuplets performed Twelve Angry Men as a one-woman show at Massey Hall in the mid-1950s.

I'm kidding - Brad, Rob, and Graham aren't really brothers; they just play them on record, the same way Pernell Roberts wasn't really a doctor ...

Regardless, the album is a fine example of wondrous power pop, deftly produced by Adrian Belew. The band seemed to effortlessly meld the pop sensibilities of Split Enz–era Neil Finn with the rock chops of fellow Illinois rockers Cheap Trick, tying it all together with a healthy dose of sparkling guitars, rockabilly swing, and a driving beat. Adventure Time indeed.

* audio frequency, what else would it stand for?

 




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