Dave Allen & The Elastic Purejoy

(World Domination Music)
by Ryk McIntyre

How many times have you picked up or read about a new album, and found yet another band claiming to “pick out a new direction, a new sound…”? And maybe you’ve taken that bait and spit it back out too many times to listen to that line again. Wrong. When legendary bass player Dave Allen (Gang of Four, Shriekback, Low Pop Suicide) spoke of this band as a chance for new approaches, he made sure he delivered. He doesn’t even play bass on the whole album. Instead, he crafts some of the freshest, heartiest – dare I say – pop music; the kind we once looked to XTC or Robyn Hitchcock for. I find myself listening/re-listening to the smooth “What Did You Expect?” or the try-not-to-feel-your-heart swell, “The Agnostic Comes Clean” with its banjo line a quiet triumph all its own. I rocked my year-old son to sleep listening to the latter track. I wanted to laugh and cry, fuck the cliché, and I just quietly held him and listened to the track again. During interviews and in press releases, Dave Allen has said the album was affected profoundly by the deaths of two close friends. Given this, Mr. Allen has done them both proud, not going gentle into that dark thought, but re-routing all that through this and other projects, including AHFA (Artists for a Hate-Free America). The moment-of-silence track gives one time to think, to hold someone dear close or closer, and smiling, put on that favorite song one more time.