Beat Music (Japan Version)
Beat Music • Ripete • LP-Parke Puterbaugh
Rolling Stone, 1983
One of the things that keeps me listening to rock & roll is its almost magical power of spontaneous generation. As one vine withers away, healthy new shoots appear in the most unlikely places. Among the more promising of the new breed are the SpongeTones, a neo-Merseybeat group from Charlotte, North Carolina. Though the band coalesced out of a pool of local musicians who played Beatles covers at a Charlotte club, the SpongeTones' maiden LP is full of nothing but originals. From the jump to it opening bars of the beat raver "Here I Go Again" to the woozy, slow-mo psychedelia of "Eloquent Spokesman," the grooves on Beat Music are aglow with a forward-thrusting musical abandon that recalls the glory days of many of the most familiar British Invasion front-liners, including the Beatles, the Dave Clark Five, the Zombies and the Who of "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere." But the SpongeTones' music has little of the rote, dogmatic obeisance of mere revivalism; instead, it sounds like the soundtrack to a party so good it could never happen in real life.
My favorite cut is "Cool Hearted Girl," which wraps an irresistible guitar hook around a pumping, "She's a Woman"-style tune. But this is the sort of album that'll have twelve different people picking twelve different favorite cuts. Get hip -- tune into the SpongeTones.