IT seems incongruous to listen to this album on CD. Recorded using vintage mics directly onto an antique 1960s Berlant ¼ inch tape machine, Signs and Signifiers would surely be more at home on vinyl, 78rpm even.
Because it’s as if someone opened a time capsule from 1958 and discovered an unreleased Little Richard album. This is pure rock ‘n’ roll, not Straycats style, not B-52s, but the real thing. How curiously fresh it sounds, blistering simple riffs and hooks that stand today’s test of time as well as they did for Elvis five decades ago. Stand out tracks I Can’t Complain, Scandalous and the opener Northside Gal are astonishingly accurate.
That said, McPherson is not averse to a touch of modernity, borrowing piano loops from Wu Tang Clan and on the title track the tremolo guitar is pure Johnny Marr. But by and large he plays it straight. Raw and gutsy, McPherson has put the rock back into rock ‘n’ roll.
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