Monday 9 July 2012

NRBQ - Keep This Love Goin'


Time Travel

I’ve been listening to and enjoying a variety of NRBQ albums from across the decades since revisiting and reviewing their debut album of 1969. This one from 2011 may have only one remaining member from the original line-up, but it retains the eclectic mix of rock’n’roll, pop, jazz, rockabilly and appropriated classical music established in that first memorable outing.

Terry Adams - keyboardist, main songwriter and original member - formed his new band Terry Adams Rock and Roll Quartet in 2007 but after a couple of years felt there was enough of the NRBQ sound and ethos in this reincarnation to bear the band’s original name and lay claim to this release. It is, as ever, varied without producing killer punches, and each track reflecting whatever rainbow genre of the moment to perfection. On this album I think its pop sensibilities dominate, and they in turn represent 50s/60s sounds a la Beatles and Beach Boys – as well as more generic rock’n’roll – and at times the lyrics betray their anachronisms in the innocent reflections on what sounds like young love by, from Adams at least, an elder statesman of Romance as well as musical experience. Keep This Love Goin’, Here I Am and Let Go are prime examples of such pleasant aural time-travelling.

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