Almanac

At this stage of the game, the hallowed triumvirate of The Byrds, The Beatles and The Beach Boys have had their respective oeuvres so thoroughly plundered that if you’re going to appropriate their sound for the umpteenth time, you best have a damn good reason for doing so.

Fountains Of Wayne’s 1997 debut remains one of the very few masterpieces to have emerged from the jingle-jangle guitar-pop genre over the past number of years – its devastating combination of lethally catchy melodies (the one thing such bands usually forget, ironically) and savagely witty lyrics meant it became required listening for anybody planning another updating of ’60s psychedelic pop.

Dublin songwriter Thomas Walsh appears to have taken a leaf out of the book of Adam Schlesinger and co. He has been operating under the moniker of Pugwash for a few years now, and Almanac is the follow-up to his 1999 debut, Almond Tea. With the help of various musicians (most notably Keith Farrell, who engineered the record and co-wrote two tracks), he has crafted an enjoyable collection of sweetly melodic curios which might not blow any minds, but will probably soothe a few troubled ones.

Walsh has essentially taken the genre staples – chiefly the ringing guitar and whirring organ – and added just enough new ingredients to give it his own distinctive flavour. ‘Everything We Need’ is the first stand-out, a mid-tempo, lighters-aloft anthem which features some surreal, ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’-quoting organ. Other highlights include ‘The Season Of Flowers & Leaves’, which with its psychedelic flourishes and stoner-poetry lyric is highly redolent of Syd Barrett, and ‘Monorail’ which opens and closes with a quirky 1920s-trumpet sample and in between recalls no-one so much as Beck.

Almanac is probably a few songs too long and a little too indebted to the aforementioned Beatles/Byrds axis, but it is an accomplished record and offers confirmation of Walsh’s songwriting talents.