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:: Track list & details
It took me a little while to get into this record. Now, this isn't to say that it is not a good record, not by any stretch. It's just that after living in Los Angeles for a decade and a half, anything that smacks of mid-60s Byrds-y psychedelia kinda gets lost in the ether by the time it hits my ears. That being said, the more I listened to Changes Near, the more the songs themselves crawled out of the woodwork. Tracks like “Nothing Out of Something,” with its ethereal, David Crosby-inspired vocal passages, and “Turning Away,” which draws upon the kick of early REM, distinguished the album above and beyond any of the genres to which it harkens. The Quarter After are anchored by the Campanella brothers, Robert (who has also played with Brian Jonestown Massacre, in fact Anton Newcombe co-mixed a couple of tracks on the record) and Dominic. Changes Near is their second record and with it comes a continuation of a lineage of sound that began with the explosion of British Invasion-inspired bands that took over the Sunset Strip in the mid-1960s. This sound has never really departed the Los Angeles music scene and has been revived periodically over the years, as evidenced by the Paisley Underground movement of the 1980s and bands like Brian Jonestown Massacre in the 1990s, with The Quarter After keeping things alive right here & now.
The only Achilles heel that I have found among bands that use this Beatles/Byrds sound as a template is that the songs can come off sounding a little precious. The bands from the 1960s that created this sound in first place were, themselves, trying to emulate the Aftrican-American R&B sound from the 1950s & early 1960s. These permutations involved (in many cases) a natural watering down of the visceral punch of the records of their heroes. By the time one hears this sound from bands in the new millennium, it can be a mere shell of that which has come before it. I make the preceding point, so that I may now make this one: The Quarter After suffer from no such affliction! A good case in point would be the excellent track “This is How I Want to Know You”. This swingin' rocker is anchored by a pummeling rhythm section (aka David Koenig & Nelson Bragg), which comes on like a Who-inspired freight train by the end of the track.
Changes Near has all the makings of a great summertime listen and a classic in its own right. I highly recommend picking up this record, smokin' a little something and gettin' off on these grooves from here to eternity.
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