Brinsley Schwartz - Silver Pistol / Please Don`t Ever Change

2004 UK reissue, 2-fer album. Last two studio albums from the much-loved and missed Brinsleys. Albums feature originals by Ian Gomm and Nick Lowe. The albums date from 1972 and 1973 respectively. Both albums remastered and great, extensive liners from Alan Robinson. With Silver Pistol, if there is any such thing as classic British pub/country rock; if so, this is it. "4 1/2 stars... Silver Pistol isn`t the definitive pub rock album, but it is the first great record to surface from the scene. Like much of the first wave of pub rock, Silver Pistol is quiet, laid-backm and low-key - with its warm, rustic sound and a gentleness that infuses even the rockers, this is the closest to the Band that the Brinsleys got. There are some major differences, most of them coming from Nick Lowe. That`s not to denigrate new guitarist/songwriter Ian Gomm, since his four numbers (particularly "Dry Land" and "Range War") reveal a fine songwriter with a keen sense of melody and a knack for synthesizing country, rock, and folk into something distinctive, but Lowe really hits his stride with this record. This is in to some degree due to the influence of Jim Ford, a renegade American roots-rocker who Brinsley Schwarz backed on an unreleased and subsequently lost 1971 album. The group covers two of his songs, "Niki Hoeke Speedway" and "Ju Ju Man," on Silver Pistol, and these numbers reveal the appealingly off-kilter sense of humor and pop hooks that would form the foundation of Lowe`s style. Those sensibilities are just beginning to creep into his songwriting on Silver Pistol, on the Beatles-meets-Band "Unknown Number," the lovely "Nightingale," the wonderful pop tune "The Last Time I Was Fooled," and the epic "Silver Pistol." His other two songs are sturdy country-rock numbers a notch below Gomm`s best on the record, but still very good, and it all adds up to an endearing low-key roots rock album that doesn`t just find Brinsley Schwarz coming into their own, it stands as `-AMG. With "Don`t Ever Change", 4 stars... Released in 1973 as Brinsley Schwarz was busy touring and recording the follow-up to Nervous on the Road, Please Don`t Ever Change is a collection of singles, live cuts, and radio sessions from the early `70s. The odds-and-sods nature of the record actually works in its favor, since it accentuates the group`s ramshackle nature.

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