Album Review: Out Calls Only by Donald Cumming

“I don’t listen to a lot of contemporary music,” Donald Cumming has said, and his first solo album certainly backs up his assertion. After fronting the Virgins, one of the post-Killers bands who never made it, he’s embraced rock classicism with a passion: there’s quite a bit of Tom Petty in Out Calls Only, a certain amount of mellow late-60s rock (especially on the seven-minute centrepiece, Scarecrow), and a dash of confessional singer-songwriter material (as on the closer, Spanish Horses). Even the cover looks like a period piece, as if he’d tried to cross Darkness on the Edge of Town and Donald Fagen’s The Nightfly.

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The first solo record from Donald Cumming, former singer with New York post-punk upstarts The Virgins, comes across as an over-polished homage to mid-career Bruce Springsteen. Though boasting some potentially good songs (Shadow Tears and the epic, Eagles-esque Scarecrow, which could have been a 70s desert-rock classic), the slick production sucks much of the life from the album. Workin’ It Out switches things up with Bryan Ferry-ish vocal turns and slight disco bass interludes that point toward a more energetic song lurking underneath it all, but, as with the album in general, it’s devoid of the grit of another East Coast touchstone, Jonathan Richman.

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You know about the big releases each week, but what about those smaller albums which may have passed underneath your radar. Don’t miss out on the smaller, lesser-known gems which might become some of your favourites. We’ve rounded up seven of the best new album releases from this week: catch up ….

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