CD Review: David Series - Meerkat Parade.

David Series (guitar), Huw Rees (keyboards), James Lindsay (double bass), Max Popp (drums).

(Review by Steve T)

A short album by modern standards, which is no bad thing in my view. I generally try to play albums three times to allow any idiosyncrasies to emerge on the basis that the greatest music sneaks up on you. This is one that I kept putting on thinking this time I'm going to concentrate, only for it to recede into the background. This may or may not be a problem for the listener. Right, here we go - last time.

Double bass intro before a guitar slides in and I'm left bemused that we haven't had a glut of this over the last twenty odd years. An interesting keyboard solo before it's back to slide guitar and now I'm thinking Hawaii.

Drums proper appear on track two Mr Frisbee - there may have been something on track one Herzog but I'm not going back to it - and there's some fabulous straight guitar from Series. Popp on drums gets to briefly drum up a storm as the others continue behind him to take it out. This is a recurring motif on several tracks, culminating on the final tack Scoobie Snack (great titles) for a longer solo before Rees comes back on Fender Rhodes with Series suitably rocking it up.

In between, Oink features the band building up behind the leader as he gets some tasteful effects from his use of pedals on perhaps the highlight of the album.

For the most part, it's fairly straight guitar, acoustic piano and the acoustic bass works wonderfully, resisting the tug to smooth-jazz. However, as someone who doesn't automatically hate smooth-jazz, if it ain't swingin', rockin' or funkin', it's kinda gonna happen on this sort of thing. 

A perfectly good album but don't expect it to change your world. 

Steve T.