The Inexperienced - Too Inexperienced

I’ll say one thing for Simon Felton and his band of merry mirthmakers over at Pink Hedgehog HQ: they’ve got one helluva sense of humour! Where else in label land would the bored [sic] of directors have the cheeky audacity to come up with such a cunning stunt of a title for an act’s sophomore effort?

In this case, the inexperienced chap is North Londoner Alex Meadows, whose flimsy resume includes stints as Sir Tom Jones’ bassist, plucking all the bass strings on pop idol Will Young’s Echoes LP, replacing Nick Fyffe in Jamiroquai, and throbbing his four-string through a couple of albums with Electrasy (including Pink Hedgehog’s Wired for Dreaming). So, as I said, totally inexperienced. But not TOO inexperienced that he couldn’t write, produce, record, sing, and play all the instruments on his second solo effort.

And what an effort it is! Gushing confidence and blushing harmonies storm out of the gate on opener ‘Something to Sing’ as soft as a summer breeze and as giddy as a schoolgirl’s crush. And while the technical physics behind the healing powers of ‘528hz’ are lost on this reviewer, the song Meadows wrings out of it is sure to cure the blues, as is the sleepy, proggy ‘Microwaving’, which wouldn’t embarrass any Alan Parsons Project fanciers out there.

There’s some funky brass throughout ‘No Yeah’, but then ‘Something Outta Nothing’ sinks down into the comfy chair so you can catch your breath. Why, he even whips out Peter Frampton’s old talk box to comically robotic effect in ‘Inventor Preventer’. ‘Real Life Situation’ recalls those smooth, soulful sounds emanating from your transistor throughout the early 70s (complete with Stevie Wonder-ful synth burps), and Meadows wraps up with a gnarly instro (‘Curl One Off’) that sounds like it fell off the b-side of an old DeWolfe library album. Huzzah!