In the past month, it has been my great privilege to see two very different American artists making their debut appearances on UK soil, and whilst this isn’t a ‘proper-proper’ review, I would be severely neglecting my duty if I didn’t at least mention them.

1. LIVING IN SIN IN THE USA

Oakley Hall played a modest headlining show in London a few weeks back, and sold just about enough tickets to make it worthwhile, or so I should imagine. The band is the brainchild of Pat Sullivan, formerly Papa Crazee, who left Oneida in 2001 to pursue a ‘country direction’, of which the six piece line-up of Oakley Hall is the eventual result. And goddamn almighty, are they ever an impressive band onstage, pulling out all the stops to create the kind of Cosmic American Music that even the more classic rock affiliated of today’s ‘indie’ bands scarcely dare aim at anymore, let alone achieve. They’ve got three guitarists on stage much of the time, ploughing fields of holy Big Star tone into a harvest of mighty ‘ragged glory’ rocking out, with the frequent addition of fiddle, organ and lapsteel and harmonious male and female vocals grappling their way across sky-scraping, country/folk rooted mountainsides of songs with an “all together now!” vibe straight out of prime-era Fairport. The rhythm section, it should be noted, sound decidedly more modern than the rest of the band, which is perhaps for the best, often veering into a forceful space-rock kinda hypnotic groove.

By the time they launch into their second song – and Oakley Hall songs tend to be the kind of top-heavy, ocean-going dreadnaughts that need to be launched with the aid of a dockside crane and a crowd of cheering peasants – my jaw has hit the floor. How can a band this good even EXIST in the modern era, let alone be playing for 50 people in some soulless Hoxton hellhole of a Monday evening? By the time they get going on their biggest, bestest and most memorable song – “If I Was In El-Dorado”, which sounds like the result of 10 years careful examination of everything The Eagles did wrong, and how it could be put gloriously RIGHT, I’m ready to sing along to songs I’ve never heard before, punch the air in sheer joy and even throw in some ‘halleluiahs’.

Of course, the high wears off after returning home, downloading some Oakley Hall mp3s (the ones offered for free on their website I should make clear) and thinking things through a bit more. With the immediacy of their live show fading, it becomes clear that for all the weighty SUBSTANCE and SOLIDITY of their music, Oakley Hall are just as much of a post-modern concern as the latest batch of hipster disco crap. This isn’t their fault of course, and unlike most others, the band are aiming so high that even when they miss the bullseye and don’t quite get to hang out in heaven with Gram and Jerry, following their travails is still a thoroughly rewarding experience, like watching Bogart go through hell and back in search of gold in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” or something.

Like contemporaries such as Espers or Dead Meadow, Oakley Hall’s quest is essentially to take the most enticing and powerful elements from their most fetishised ‘60s and ‘70s LPs and bring them back to life, transforming them via modern hindsight, equipment and expertise into the kind of mighty, fully-realised music that was sometimes only hinted at within previous generations’ treasures. To fully succeed, this process should happen organically (or should at least appear to). The band’s inspirations should fuse into a glorious whole, capturing the indefinable spirit of their source material without direct quotation from it, bypassing any fears of retrogressive plagiarism.

Sometimes, as in the aforementioned ‘..El-Dorado’ or the ecstatic ensemble-playing of the group’s live incarnation, Oakley Hall succeed brilliantly, but in a lot of their currently available recordings (as evidence I take last year’s ‘Gypsum Strings’, which I have subsequently bought for real, actual money), the alchemy doesn’t quite come off. You can identify the component parts too readily, and see the joins. Not that that makes it any less of a fucking great listening experience, as entire songs-worth of lovingly fashioned Zuma-era Crazy Horse rocking and wrecked Neil Young vocals are hammered, nailed and welded together with Flying Burrito Bros choruses, brooding passages of Richard Thompson lyricism, an epic dose of San Fran Ballroom scene psyche jamming, banjo n’ fiddle-led Pentangle trad-folk mutations, and occasional passages of distorted riffing more in keeping with the rest of the Brooklyn avant-rock fraternity, with the latter two strains in particular combining to form the most heavy-rocking rendition of ‘The House Carpenter’ you’re ever likely encounter. On a prosaic level: great stuff! No complaints whatsoever! But just not *quite* managing to skirt the synthesis of original genius you suspect this band should rightly embody.

Between them, I’m confident that the current members of Oakley Hall have enough talent to muddle together careers in a half-dozen moderately enjoyable indie bands, and their decision to come together as a group of fine musicians and deny their respective egos in order to put in the hours and hard graft needed to create something utterly honest, timeless and spectacular is definitely to be applauded. And, given the ambition of what they’re trying to achieve, to say that on their current form they’re NEARLY reaching where they want to be, and COULD WELL get there in the near future, isn’t so much a criticism as a vindication: keep marching Oakley Hall, and the glory shall be yours.



LINK >Oakley Hall’s website