Outrageous Cherry – Out There in the Dark – Review

Outrageous Cherry

Out There in the Dark (Del-Fi 2000)
by Jon Sarre

There seems to be a place for weirdo psych-art pop ever since the late ’60s when Brian Wilson rearranged his frontal lobe by bangin’ it on the commercial ceiling with Pet Sounds. Not that Outrageous Cherry‘s gonna make any bucks with their over-developed retro singles band style – imagine Herman’s Hermits or the Turtles meets iconoclastic nobodies who crop up later as “influences” (like the Velvet Underground, who else?). Interestingly enough, that sounds a lot like Sell-Out era Who, ‘specially when they dump in the very John Entwistle-esque trumpet and piped in keys (which I suspect was a hold over from the ‘oo’s stormy early work with Creation nutcase Shel Talmy), check out “Togetherness” and, albeit in a much more Reed/Cale fashion, “A Bad Movie.” Outrageous Cherry, however, have a sense of pace that Pete Townsend didn’t possess pre-Tommy (Pete spent the majority of the 1960s tryin’ to hit paydirt with the perfect 2:30 pop song). I guess they’ve got the freedom to be unhurried, seeing as radio desire to play stuff like this doesn’t really exist. That aside, the ebb and flow of the songs are set up with repetitive guitar noise build-ups (more VU), and the listener is kinda tugged along for the ride. Even the eleven and a half minute “There’s No Escape From the Infinite” isn’t the endurance test other people’s over 10:00 epics are. Call ’em throwbacks, but at least Outrageous Cherry harkens back to the day when all pop music wasn’t transient pap.
(PO Box 69188 Los Angeles, CA 90069)