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Reviews

Al Bloch — Protest Songs
(Green Monkey GM1075, 2020, CD / DL)

by Jon Davis, Published 2021-04-17

Protest Songs Cover art

As the story goes, Al Bloch wasn’t planning to record a second album in 2020. It Was All Once Bright Jewels was a substantial work for his solo debut, but the enforced isolation of the pandemic brought on a spurt of creative activity, and Protest Songs is the result. In typical Bloch fashion, the songs on Protest Songs are not really protest songs — they’re just great rock songs that can broadly be described as Power Pop. “Melodic,” “energetic,” and “clever” are some of the adjectives that apply across the board. This is good songwriting informed by decades of other good songwriting, with offhand references to past gems going back to the 60s. The set kicks off with a real earworm called “You Gotta Have a Plan”: “If you wanna fix your problems then you gotta have a plan.” To quote at more length: “I’m partial to this Earth whose air we are destroying, and the faces on my TV set are getting quite annoying. I’m pulling back the curtains and I’m doing what I can — If you wanna fix your problems then you gotta have a plan.” That’s as close to an actual protest song as it gets. Bloch’s humor comes out in songs like “From One Caveman to Another” involving a denizen of the Stone Age who ends up in the narrator’s band and gets all the girls. All sung to a driving rock beat and polished off in two and a half minutes. There’s also “Zombies Are Coming,” which gets back to the social commentary roots of the zombie genre. “Bass Solo” tells the harrowing story of being a bass player in a bar where the band playing isn’t very good, knowing that there’s a horrible bass solo coming and being thwarted every time you try to leave. “Bass player booming and he’s sounding so bad, I’m a bass player too so it kinda makes me mad... I don’t care where we go, just get me out of here before the bass solo!” In any case the album is full of great tunes with catchy melodies, and I find it impossible to listen without breaking a smile. This is a good thing in today’s world.

Filed under: New releases, 2020 releases

Related artist(s): Al Bloch (My Favorite Martian)

More info
http://greenmonkeyrecords.bandcamp.com/album/protest-songs

 

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