When Carl Barat first launched Dirty Pretty Things, there was a degree of
goodwill.
After all, he seems like a decent lad, there was a feeling that he’d been
unfairly cheated out of any credit in the Libertines, and he might as well
do something while P-Doh was off being a celebrity/cellmate/carcrash and
occasionally a Babyshamble, even if it was an undaventurous continuation of
the Libs’ style.
Played quietly, the music made by this trio of Chicagobased Mexican-Americans
provides a gentle summer samba soundtrack to merge seamlessly into the
wallpaper of your local branded coffee emporium.
Seth Lakeman, the 31-yearold Devonian whose name sounds like a shady minor
character in a Thomas Hardy novel, is folk’s crossover poster boy.
The four great Van albums are ‘Astral Weeks’, ‘Moondance’, ‘Veedon Fleece’ and
… this one. It is a little-regarded thing from the height of Morrison’s
rapturous period in the Eighties and it is utterly beautiful.
Eric Dolphy, who died 44 years ago today, and whose 80th anniversary fell last
week, was a Los Angeles born reeds player with a radical, oddly interior
style and an interest in the outer extremities of sound.
The second offering from this band is a crisp, polished collection of tuneful japery and pithy urban commentary.
Looking back with tracks like these is a hugely enjoyable process.
On this evidence alone, all signs point to a bright future.
Infadels will win over plenty of new friends on the festival circuit this summer.
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