Doubleplusgood

Album Review

Laz McCluskey is a Scottish pop obsessive who carries his influences like a flag — the C-86 gang (especially Tallulah Gosh and Primal Scream), the Byrds, the Rain Parade, the Jesus and Mary Chain and pretty much anything with a hook, a jangling guitar, and just enough of a melodic quirk to identify itself as "indie" rather than "mainstream." McCluskey is the sole official member of Bubblegum Lemonade (a name he got from an obscure album by Cass Elliot), and on his first full-length album, Doubleplusgood, he delivers a dozen sweet, guitar-powered pop tunes created with the help of his Rickenbacker, a drum program, and his computer. McCluskey's work sounds admirably warm and organic given its one-man-band genesis, and say what you want about digital technology, but this stuff sounds a whole lot better than the four-track cassette recordings every pop-minded kid was foisting upon the world back in the 1980s. Of course, in many respects Doubleplusgood isn't especially different from what your neighborhood Paisley Underground collector or Sarah Records completist might have been hawking on cassette at the local cool record store 25 years earlier, and while McCluskey lovingly honors his influences, he doesn't do much here to suggest he could ever match the level of their work. But he does have a sure hand with a melody, his guitar work is solid and concise, and there's a genuine love for the music that radiates throughout these songs; it's clear that McCluskey is doing this music for all the right reasons, and when something like "I'll Never Be Yours," "A Billion Heartbeats," or "Susan's in the Sky" comes around, it's not hard to imagine Bubblegum Lemonade having a bright future among fellow pop fanatics.