Jonny - Jonny
- Written by Richard Seddon
Jonny is a new project put together by Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake and Euros Childs of defunct Welsh indie rock outfit Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, and they go together like melted cheese on tortilla chips. Their debut album is self titled and, as you’d imagine, this partnership produces quirky, psychedelic pop.
Album opener, ‘Wich is Wich’ kicks things off with handclaps, a stylophone style keyboard and the obligatory fuzz guitars. It’s short, repetitive and immediate, bordering on a jingle rather than a song actually at around a minute and a half. ‘Waiting Around for You’ is a great track, close your eyes and that kid from Charlie Brown could be playing the piano - well, you don’t have to close your eyes, it’s not a video. What was his name? It’s also got that kind of written in the '50s, performed in the '70s Grease/ Happy Days feel to it. You get the both worlds. ‘Gold Mine’ could be a Supergrass song at times, with its distorted bass, unusual chord choices and backing vocals. Not a bad thing in the slightest.
Another foot tapper, bizarrely clocking in at 10:45 - sorry if I sound like Norris McWhirter complete with stop watch, but it’s worth pointing out as it’s sat in an album of otherwise 2 minute pop songs - is ‘Cave Dance’. It’s unbelievably catchy and you’ll be singing along before you know it, ‘Teenage life ain’t no fun at all, Do the cave dance do the cave dance, When you’re stuck in a cave with no rock ‘n’ roll, Do the cave dance do the cave dance.’ I find it hard to believe they haven’t choreographed an actual cave dance to accompany this looking something like John Travolta (pilot) in Pulp Fiction. Knowing they had a classic on their hands here, they break things down in order to build it up with a repeated, ‘D d d d d d d do the cave dance,’ lovely stuff. The track then meanders along quirkily and ends with mellow tones never to return to its upbeat beginnings.
But it’s not all, quirky pop. Things slow down for tracks like ‘I Want to be Around You’, a sweet little love song including the lines ‘Break the bread, drink the wine, I want to be around you...I feel love in the air’. It’s innocently happy, why not? ‘I’ll Make Her My Best Friend’ is a country song that will be knocking round your head for days. In fact a lot of what you’ll hear on Jonny could become earworms.
If you were told that a member of Teenage Fanclub and Gorky's Zygotic Mynci had collaborated you’d imagine exactly what you get here: catchy, retro pop songs. Blake and Childs are well seasoned songwriters and even though they’ve never felt the need to conform before, their debut album Jonny has the sound of a relaxed confidence only found in musicians with such a prolific back catalogue.
Schroeder, that was his name.