English Rock: Glenn Tilbrook's Transatlantic Ping Pong

There’s a great walking scale emphasized by keyboards in many Squeeze songs and now also in Glenn Tilbrook’s solo work. With variations and such added to these walking scales, I’m inclined to put Squeeze and Tilbrook in the Jazz-influenced Rock section. After all, as I said in my Tilbrook concert review, there’s a similarity to Elvis Costello and the Attractions. Plus, if you want to be pianist about it, that’s where bands with heavy keyboard/piano leanings should end up in the Spectrum.

Overall, though, Squeeze and Tilbrook are Britpop, pure and simple. To the English Rock section, then, with Tilbrook’s Transatlantic Ping Pong. The Beatles, XTC, Tilbrook, Crowded House, Housemartins, Free French, Spearmint. For what I own in my collection, that’s how it plays out.

What makes Tilbrook so hard to define is that his brand of Britpop (and really Squeeze as well) grabs from all different directions, like putting new clothes on a paper doll. The basic songs are Britpop, but they can wear soul-funk, jazzed-up beats, New Wave, Who-like rock, or countrified balladry.

Tilbrook isn’t just turning in some kind of “Retro Squeeze” thing. His latest solo project builds on what he learned in Squeeze while finding his own voice. The opening track, “Untouchable,” sounds most reminiscent of Squeeze and acts like the paper doll, the Britpop song from where the rest of the album departs, expands, and funkifies.

Watch how this works. Track 2, “Lost in Space,” is a soul-funk variation, with a theme that brings to mind Thomas Dolby’s Aliens Ate My Buick. Track 3, “Neptune,” turns in a great back beat. Here Tilbrook proves how he can take a 4th grade joke and make it into an incredible pop song (“Oh! Here you come here you come now/Oh! Where are you coming from now?/Uranus and I’m here in Neptune”). Track 4, “Hostage,” adds the country influence with pedal steel guitar. Track 5, “Hot Shaved Asian Teens,” a potentially offensive song which actually turns out to be a stream of consciousness, dream sequence of word phrases, spins out the New Wave. Track 6, “Ray & Me,” a light ballad accompanied by toy piano and beat boxing. Are you still with me? The Britpop keeps taking on different shapes.

Having seen the Fluffers working so well together with Tilbrook live on stage, it is great to take special note of the tracks that bring them all together on the album. “Lost in Space,” “Ray & Me,” “Reinventing the Wheel,” “Where I Can Be Your Friend,” and “There for Her,” feature the members of the Fluffers: Lucy Shaw on bass, Simon Hanson on drums, and Stephen Large on keyboards.

There’s some crude humor here, as I mentioned with “Hot Shaved Asian Teens” (just typing that title into my blog will probably generate some unintended Web traffic!). However, Tilbrook’s charm is that he can take that crude humor to talk about what really troubles us, what we really think and feel. “Domestic Disturbance,” a ballad walking the border between pop and lounge act, emerges from the humor and fun of Transatlantic Ping Pong with the lines that jumped out at me while Tilbrook played live, “Sliding from the shadows/Of our domestic disturbance/Uncertainty has been the only thing I’m sure of/My feelings are elusive/Somewhere that I just will not go/Now we’re on a journey, where it ends I don’t know.”

Through this music I am trusting Tilbrook to be guide to understanding life and love. Yet, Tilbrook brings a lot of fun to this prospect of encountering my own feelings. It’s not too bad to reflect on your life if it comes in the form of Britpop.

As Tilbrook would say, "Cheers then!"

Thanks to Glenn Tilbrook,Quixotic Records, Compass Records, and Tilbrook’s tour manager for the review copy.