White Bread Black Beer

Recorded solo in the back room of his London home, this is the extremely non-prolific Green Gartside’s first album in seven years, and follows his return to the stage after a quarter of a century of avoiding performing live for reasons of stage fright.
Initially emerging as a purveyor of noisy conceptual art, he has veered all over the musical landscape since then. Imagine Paul Simon collaborating with The Beach Boys to make a home-brewed album with no concessions to contemporary values and you’ve got White Beer And Black Bread in one.
‘The Boom Room Bap’ could be mid-career Simon by way of The Beatles, and ‘Snow In Sun’ is a deliciously poppy pastiche of Mr Wilson on happy pills. ‘Mrs Hughes’ has a smart lyric but goes on a bit, and ’Cooking’ weaves fine acoustic and electric guitars that contrast with the dominant synth feel of most of the tracks. ‘E Eleventh Nuts’ stumbles over clumsily executed, irritating drum patterns and fake instrumentation, while the creepy, synth-bound ‘Petrococadollar’ actually sounds attractively old-fashioned. Incongruously enough, the ambling ‘Road To No Regret’ has a country-lite bounce to it.
Overall, the ultra-smooth consistency of the homegrown production and Gartside’s sugar-coated vocals could make this album a monotonous experience for non-fans. But a little perseverance will reward those who can’t wait until 2013 for the next one.