ALBUM REVIEW: Duncan Reid and The Big Heads – The Difficult Second Album
Courtesy of Nikhil Kanukuntla ★★★☆☆
Duncan Reid is in many ways a paragon of the punk spirit. His biography tells the similar, parsimonious tale of a group of guys recruiting one another, and recording muzzled demos with a beaten-down 4 track; as the ascend through the echelons of the rough, often nocent music scene. It’s the sort of story you’ve felt you’ve already heard before, and of course you would have; the “rags-to-rock ‘n’ roll” parable is a gleeful frequenter in music history with many incarnations. However, it seems Reid has ebbed and waned in obscurity; – a near 35 year hiatus has left Reid clawing back up to prominence looking onwards from the 70s. After Reid‘s affiliation with The Boys and The Ramones – which here would only have to be discarded as mild aperçus coursing through many side-projects and reformations – we find him entering solo territory.
Duncan Reid and The Big Heads quietly exploded with the release of Little Big Head on April of 2013. With vapour-light tracks like ‘Aren’t Women Wonderful’, it was a recondite pop-punk ditty that clawed the sound and ornamentation of his earlier work as bassist/singer. This next release, his and the band’s sophomore record; humorously named The Difficult Second Album is much of the same. A very sterile song-writing process is made almost too self-evident during the record and an overwhelming need for stricture gives a precociously polished feel. This of course needn’t be a bad thing, but it isn’t the most exciting process of sound-crafting. However, The Difficult Second Album is incredibly melodically driven, each of its 12 tracks relies on solid instrumental tightness, musicality, and, above all, an ear for the ear-worm.
Starting with ‘Another City’, the first of many tracks with characteristic sunny guitar harmonies and springiness, it is a delightful marriage of 70’s Glam with phrasing typical of some slowed-down, drugged Cliff Gallup. “Got a call to say hello/ should I stay or should I go/ oh I just don’t know” lyrically this track speaks to an evening restlessness which riddles the topography of the record; the kind of music that should be set to an indie film shot entirely on a summer night in Dalston.
The second track “Baby Doll ” is superb, the band widen the palette with soul-searching synths that sap you into the lyrical story at hand. The lyrics feel almost like a guilty pleasure, ridiculously catchy- something one is so used to associating with run-of-the-mill pop music but is used in a refreshing fashion here.
The next track called ‘C’est La Vie’ is where the first glimpses of cracks appear on the album, for once and suddenly it feels like a purely retro exercise that sinks too far down into studio clichés. There is a maximalist feel to the harmonies, and the strange mix of acerbic guitar and beach boy vocal styling would soon grow old fast. An annoying preference of the album is to act like it’s a pop-punk record masquerading as something more by having a retro feel- which is exactly what it is. These elevated aspirations never truly come to fruition, otherwise dwindling into repetition.
Like many albums, this LP peaks and troughs, with peaks appearing sporadically but troughs overall more prevalent. A reinvention is anticipated track after track, but fails to manifest, replaced with more of the same. “Joe” could be regarded the exception, an almost painfully Beatle-esque piano ballad that is reasonably charming. And indeed, that’s what the album is. Reasonably charming, incredibly catchy but void of a clinching temptation that the best pop-punk has.
The Difficult Second Album is set for release on 17 November via LBH Records.
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