On The Night Plain, by George Washington Brown (LP on Static Caravan)

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Some journeys are straightforward. The span between the beginning and the end has a smooth inevitability to it - there is a sense of predictable satisfaction. Other journeys have no sense - they have diversions and detours and you can never be certain whether there is any ultimate destination, obscured as it is by so many layers of smoke and subterfuge. George Washington Brown's journey has been of the latter variety. He first came to prominence a decade and more ago fighting the good fight as drummer and strummer in the centre of the whirlwind which was Kenickie. Many have crumbled in the aftermath of that era's extravagances but GWB, or Johnny X as he was then widely known, simply shifted focus and reacquainted himself with earlier passions of a more downhome hue. He reemerged in 2000 with a slew of EPs and singles under the guise of J Xaverre, garnering much critical goodwill and even an incongruous NME SOTW, before releasing a debut full-length, These Acid Stars, in 2003. This melange of psychedelic melancholia betrayed an encyclopedic and wistful devotion to frazzled pop and I, for one, have been waiting for a worthy successor since then. But a restless mind such as that of our hero can't be expected to chase my crude expectations. J Xaverre proved to be another unsustainable charade and GWB's fingerprints started to appear in all manner places - notably as the chief instigator behind Meet Eric Roberts, a power-pop jam-band supergroup involving Maximo Park's Paul Smith among the throng, and in a vibraphonic cameo on Field Music's Tones of Town LP. The suspicion that a speedily-snapped-up quasi-bootleg of Roberts recordings would prove to be the final music outpouring from a fellow who had acquired cult status in the North East's small and malformed music scene have, thankfully, proved unfounded with this, the release of On The Night Plain. Whether the shape-shifting and charades have come to an end, and whether this release does indeed represent some kind of conclusion or merely another starting point remains to be seen. What is clear though, is that this release contains the finest songs the old man has ever committed to tape - a smorgasbord which encompasses expansive sonic meanderings, unselfconscious indie-rock thrashing, sad-eyed melodrama and the kind of wised-up humour we might expect from a statesman and scholar with such a track record, but which is a rarity in these youthquaking, moronically-earnest and docile times. Here we have George Washington Brown comprehensively topping his past endeavours, having created a truly cherishable thing - a humanistic modern record, a gift from one adventurer to others. 330 edition heavy duty vinyl in a paste on sleeve (cd is included). For fans of Guided by Voices, Animal Collective, Van Dyke Parks and the Elephant 6 collective

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