Sean Good
Vol.1 - The Band That Never Was
SG 01

About half of these songs are basically Sean Good singing his own material, backing himself on an acoustic guitar, but as a singer/songwriter he is not always fulfilling, because the more conventionally arranged songs seem to be trapped in a post-acid, grey and melancholy reality. When the arrangements get more experimental and psychedelic, they also get more colourful and interesting, like on the Dylanesque All Right, the out-of-tune Trudy, and even the AOR tainted Victory Show.

But what caught my instant full attention were the instrumentals present. Ian is a jazzy, ambient piece that may sound a little new-agey, but on closer inspection it really is too spicy to accompany any kind of deep meditational attempts. Absolutely interesting and enjoyable! Skip the next instrumental, Loop, a synthetic latin percussive piece which ends up sounding like a plastic one-man Santana rhythm section demo outtake. But with the third and last instrumental Freighter we are back in ambient space. Flowing and beautiful ... have we landed on Malacandra yet? I think so! This one would make a perfect soundtrack for moving around on one of C.S. Lewis' colourful and adventurous Space Trilogy planets.

If you're looking for comparisons, Sean Good has been compared to early Bowie by others, which is probably not all wrong. I would also list Syd Barrett as a reference point, and the early solo albums of Steve Kilbey (The Church) also comes to mind. On the whole, the instrumental peaks overshadow the more forgettable straighter songs on this CD, and I feel confident that Sean Good will come up with even better stuff for his next release, which is said to be in the works. Hopefully it will contain more of the experimental and ambient stuff, which I think he handles well. He might also consider including the lyrics, as this would probably help listeners like myself to give the lyrics the attention that they deserve.

Copyright © 1999 Knut Tore Breivik