Michael Slawter - Assassination

Michael Slawter has been on the indie power pop scene for over a decade, fronting the excellent The Saving Graces and Niedermeyer and now he joins us on this wonderful solo outing, entitled "An Assassination Of Someone You Knew". "Slawter clearly holds a doctorate in the dialect of pop. From the opening cut, "Count T0 10", a buoyant love devotional awash in cross-cutting strums and a tune that could pass for one of Tommy Keene` great anthems, through album closer "Crashing Down", a break up song with Searchers-style jangles and luminous harmony vocals, the album transports me back and makes me feel things I haven`t felt in ages. All the women I`ve known - puppy loves, passionate affairs, unrequited romances, even passing fantasies - seem to find their own soundtracks here. There`s the rock chick who poses and pouts in front of the mirror playing guitar to T. Rex records in power pop chugger "She Thinks She`s Cool" and there`s the sophisticate who steals the singer`s soul, love at the first site, in the Windbreakers-like "Leave Her Alone". It` remarkable how Slawter, with a sweet, urgent vocal style and a knack for memorable riffs and classic arrangement, draws those feelings out of me. He was previously spotted in The Saving Graces, a tight power pop unit of whom, in my enthusiasm, I probably uttered a clich or two. I do recall leading off a review of their last record with the question, "Who said sell-crafted, heartfelt jangly pop was a dying artform?" (Raise your hand if you spot the cliches) The same rhetorical query could be proposed for The Assassination Of Someone You Knew. But I`ll let another critic tackle that one. This time, I just wanted to write from the heart."-Fred Mills, Magnet. A truly high-brow event that challenges the ear and heart at all turns, Extremely Highly Recommended.

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