Feeling The Fall

With a name like the Village Green, this is one band clearly unafraid to wear either their Anglophilia or their pop jones on their sleeve, but the pleasant surprise is they're good enough to not only get away with it, but they can face comparisons to their obvious influences with flying colors. Village Green masterminds J. Nicholas Allard and Jeremy Sherrer clearly dig the Beatles and the Kinks, but one can also hear the influences of harder and less obvious role models such as the Move and the Pretty Things in this music, and they're even willing to suggest they listen to such America interlopers as Cheap Trick and Big Star every once in a while. On Feeling the Fall, their first full album, the Village Green have assimilated their influences and used them to fuel their songwriting and their production smarts; the songs harken back to a pop era of the past, but do so with a breezy confidence and a skill that makes the final product sound fresh, lively, and brimming with their own personality. "Bullet to the Head" proves these guys can rock out with plenty of muscle, the lightly lysergic pastoralism of "Om: The Meaning of Life" and "Chomping at the Bit" is perfect Sunday afternoon stuff, and "Wrap Your Love Around Me" suggests these guys could lean to make with the boogie with enough encouragement. For a duo writing and producing their first full-length album, Allard and Sherrer come off as confident, accomplished, and precociously talented, and with the help of a small crew of guest musicians, they've made an album that would be the envy of many veteran popmeisters. Feeling the Fall is impressive and purely pleasurable stuff; anyone with a taste for classic pop should give this disc a spin.