(2020) Liam Hayes - Mirage Garage


Review:
First, some backstory. In the early ’90s, lovers of US indie grew bored of squinting at their lo-fi records in search of a melody and began to look for something… lusher. Bands who didn’t just talk about The Beach Boys, Burt Bacharach and Phil Spector but had glorious aspirations to sound like them. With a baroque’n’roll ethic, bands like Cardinal (which begat Eric Matthews and Richard Davies) and, here in the UK, The High Llamas, aspired to such heights. But as fashions swung from chamber pop to Britpop, that flame was lost and we got the Stereophonics instead. But then there was Plush… and Plush really should have made it. One listen to 1994 debut 7”, Three-Quarters Blind Eye/Found a Little Baby, emphasises the potential – all grandiose orchestral heartbreak. Momentum gathered with 1998 debut LP, More You Becomes You, and a high-profile film cameo in John Cusack vehicle High Fidelity and… and tragically, a run of Japanese-only releases, budget-crippling recording aspirations and a series of grand follies eventually made for a 20-year back catalogue that those in the know still swoon over but everyone else can’t hum. Which leads us to a self-released cassette of intended demo tracks recorded in a Pasadena garage. According to Liam Hayes, Mirage Garage “felt like respite from the grind of everything I had been going through” as he quit central LA for the suburbs. Whatever the motivation, it works. Not enough is made of Hayes’ playful side – any tortured artist cliché is easily dispelled by a listen to the bizarro glam racket of 2015’s Slurrup – and here, he is genuinely having fun. Herr Garage (The Ballad of John & Yoko with bonus kazoo), the Sesame Street lollop of Staple Shake and Masters & Slaves (a tropicalia tale of bloody Stockholm syndrome) all evince this most overtly, but from the spoken asides to Garage producer Luther Russell, to being unable to keep a straight face during the “doo doo” lyrics, Hayes is having himself a hoot. But not all the time. Fuelled in equal parts by his frustration at modern technology (see tender luddite lament, Here In Hell) and the lack of career progression a man who releases Japanese-only albums was doomed to suffer, laments are often devoted to Hayes himself. Familiar Plush influences return to offer a soundtrack – George Harrison, Todd Rundgren and Nilsson most obviously – but the biggest namecheck for Plushspotters this time out is Big Star. However, rather than #1 Record’s innocent chimes, it’s the dark arts of Third/Sister Lovers (see Stroke It Noel’s baroque rock) or Chris Bell’s I Am the Cosmos that resonate. Listen to Bell’s Look Up or Though I Know She Lies – the influence of both is writ large. The balance is exquisite. Garbage lyrics sit next to chords that will break your heart, cowbells and chuckles beside a mournful ballad like The More I Live. The twin components that have always existed in Plush/Liam Hayes are finally together for 33 blissful minutes. Mirage Garage is a genuine triumph, Hayes’ best in a decade.




Tracklist:



Media Report:
Genre: chamber pop, indie-pop
Source: CD
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits