ASTROPUPPEES
Sugar Beat (Manatee Records)
Reviewed by DJ Johnson

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I've been waiting a long time for this album. Ever since 2001's Little Chick Tsunami, an album that made me fall head over heels in love with the voice and music of Kelly Ryan. When you wait four years for an album, you start to worry that it just won't be the same anymore. And it wasn't the same, because they'd graduated. They were always good, the songs were always engaging, clever and rhythmic, and they had all kinds of potential, but now the potential has been reached, and then some. This is a fully realized album. Every hook is perfect without being sterile. Every melody is instantly in your memory, and the best part of the production is organic, coming from soulful, melt-in-your-spine background vocals or instrumental arrangement instead of electronic effects. The title song is so ridiculously good it should be given honorary chart status, since the radio stations are too screwed up in policies and bullshit to play it. It's soulful and brilliant the way the best music was in the mid-60s. Ryan's voice is engaging and emotive; as a vocalist she's matured light years since 2001. She's playful in "Firecracker Boys," the only song I really felt reminded me strongly of another artist (Flying Cowboys-era Rickie Lee Jones, which isn't a bad thing to draw comparison to), emotional in "Twisting Around The Blue," and she shows she's a pretty fine pop-rock singer on "Take Me Home" and "On My Way." The band is just what the doctor ordered all the way through, and the recording is gorgeous. Simply put, this is one of the very best recordings of the year thus far.

© 2005 - DJ Johnson