Beechwood - Inside The Flesh Hotel

Who says The Zombies didn’t make it and that their masterpiece “Odessey and Oracle” didn’t leave an impact? Well, maybe not much on the wider audience it deserved, but it did certainly on music critics and other musicians. Take into consideration just two facts - “Beechwood Park”, a song from that album seems to have inspired the names of at least two bands - missing in action Californian country psych rockers The Beechwood Sparks and more recently, the New York trio Beechwood.

Let's talk about the New Yorkers here, and their new, third album Inside The Flesh Hotel. Wasn’t it just a few months ago that they came up with their previous one, Songs From The Land of Nod? They certainly did! And while that album seems to have been a more subdued affair, Inside The Flesh Hotel is more musically focused, with tighter playing and stronger melodies that locate the melodicism of say, the above mentioned Zombies (“Amy”) more squarely in their hometown via the inevitable Velvet Underground (“Flesh Hotel”) and shades of The Strokes (politically charged “Bigot In My Bedroom”) and more melodic oriented New York Dolls (“Over on Everyone”).

In a way, the overall sound of the album is like a more melodic side of the garage bands found on the Lenny Kaye’s Nuggets compilation brought to more current times, with the almost sleepy garage sound of “The Ram” being a prime example. But the singer/guitarist Gordon Lawrence and the rhythm section of Sid Simmons and Isa Tineo don’t limit themselves to any inspiration they might have, and while more melodic, harmony covered material like “Up and Down” or “I Don’t Blame You Anymore” seems to be their forte, they do not lag a bit in a more uptempo garage stuff like “Nero” and tempo-shifting “I Found You Out”.

It is quite a tough job to cover the ground that Beechwood is able to on Inside The Flesh Hotel and still make it sound as a uniform musical presentation. With most of the songs clocking around or less than three-minute mark, the trio obviously has the abilities to do so. It all suggests that even better things are to come from these guys.