Goodbye Nashville Hello Camden Town (A Pub Rock Anthology) (CD)

• Category:  Music  »  Rock & Pop  »  General Rock & Pop
• Format: CD   Learn more about the CD format using Tower WIKI.
• Release Date: April 9, 2007
• Number of Discs: 2
• Label: Castle Music
• UPC: 5050749414519
• WAPI (Tower ID): 106808383
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• Tower.com Sales Rank: #111357 in Music (See Top 100 Music Bestsellers)
• #31559 in Rock & Pop (See Top 100 Rock & Pop Bestsellers)
• #20959 in General Rock & Pop (See Top 100 General Rock & Pop Bestsellers)

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A little over ten years after the first great double-disc pub rock set -- EMI's Naughty Rhythms -- comes the second, Castle's Goodbye Nashville, Hello Camden Town: A Pub Rock Anthology. Naughty Rhythms was essentially a primer, relying heavily on the few stars the genre ever produced: Brinsley Schwarz made multiple appearances, as did Kilburn & the High Roads, Dr. Feelgood, and Eddie & the Hot Rods, which was only proper given their prominence in the pubs. Goodbye Nashville digs a little deeper, unearthing many bands that didn't show up on Naughty Rhythms and emphasizing the rootsy country-rock that was certainly a key inspiration in the movement. Sometimes this comes at the expense of stretching the style's somewhat amorphous definition a little bit, but not so much that anybody that'd be inclined to pick up this collection would care. All the country boogie and blues shuffles here fit within the same world, one that is built on old-time rock & roll and lazily stretches into country-rock and folky harmonies, while dabbling into pop learned from the Beatles. These elastic borders mean that Goodbye Nashville is hardly the first listen for somebody looking for an introduction to pub rock, it nevertheless is a terrific collection for listeners who know the classics by heart, as the 49 tracks here are by and large quite excellent.

Some cuts may be a little sleepy to pub rockers who prefer the hard-driving, Stonesy R&B of the Feelgoods -- the faux folkiness of Chas & Dave's "Scruffy Old Cow," and Zoot Money's "Arkansas" do provide quite a downshift in tempo -- but most of this is party music, speeding by on three chords and glorious hooks, sometimes delivered with a gut-level punch, other times with a bit of lightness. Although the set is bookended by two cuts from Chilli Willi & the Red Hot Peppers, Goodbye Nashville follows a roughly chronological order, as the first disc is skewed slightly toward the laid-back country-rock of Bees Make Honey and early Brinsleys, with the second disc spending more time with rough rockers, as well as the purer pop of latter-day Brinsleys. Of course, this is a very rough outline, as there are plenty of rockers on the first and country gentlemen on the second, but it does give the two halves of this comp a distinct flavor, even if they're decidedly within the same general palette. The expansiveness of the comp means that some bands are repeated, which winds up showcasing such minor revelations of how the Fabulous Poodles mastered the country-rock of "Third Rate Romance" and the rowdy rocking of "Roll Your Own," or how Bees Make Honey got into jangley pop toward the end of their career on "Dance Around." More interesting is how this comp ropes in such fellow-travelers as McGuinness Flint -- Manfred Mann refugees who never quite seemed like pub-rockers -- or acclaimed guitarist Albert Lee and punk renegade Mick Farren to be part of this world. But where Goodbye Nashville really shines is in the truly obscure cuts, like the Motors-esque pop of the Cartoons' "Lunchtime Love Affair," Meal Ticket's very funny (and surprisingly polished) "Day Job," Big Jim Sullivan's fingerpicking epic "If I Could Only Play Like That," and, especially, Jerry the Ferret's "How Long," a J.D. Souther song so good the Eagles picked it for their 2007 comeback. These may be genre-specific pleasures, but there's no denying that they are pleasures, at least for pub rockers -- and for those who have long ago memorized Naughty Rhythms and the music from all the bands on that, this is necessary. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

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