ALBUM REVIEW: Big Green Return With In Retrograde
“This packed album is one small step back into the analog warmth and wide range of sounds heard on late ‘60s and early ‘70s FM radio.”
Don't let the cold, soulless retro robot on the album cover fool you; Big Green's In Retrograde is brimming with songs filled with so much humanity and compassion that it could reduce a full-grown mechanical man to a weeping puddle of rust.
When planets are in retrograde, they appear to be moving backwards. Spiritually, a person in retrograde is experiencing a time for reflection, hopefully learning from the past and recalibrating. This collection grapples with love, seperation, yearning, devotion and being misunderstood in concise and stylistically diverse pop nuggets. Most of the finely crafted tunes clock in at around three minutes, quickly making their mark and rewarding repeated listening. An album that opens with the lyric, "Been alone for such a long time now" and closes with "Baby baby, baby baby, I don’t want you, I don’t want you to go mad, mad like me", proves to be an emotional ride.
Concocted over the past two years in a Utica basement by brothers Matt and Joe Perry and released on May 1, In Retrograde follows previous Big Green releases Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick (2013), International House (2008) and 2000 Years To Christmas (1999). The band formed around 1986 and their previous works were a bit of a magical history tour, with a peculiar Abraham Lincoln fixation and many obscure pop culture references delivered with dry musical humor. The new album finds the brothers Perry far more introspective and personal with recurring themes of love, connection, bending time, sunlight, sleep and dreams. This is thinking people's pop with lines like, "I am not malicious and I'm not capricious" and "Before I make another promise, I will channel Nostradamus".
Brother Matt handles the majority of the lead vocals with Joe handling a few, bringing in his soulful lower register. In many instances their voices blend, echoing with the sound of siblings. Tasteful arrangements complement each composition with a variety of approaches.
This packed album is one small step back into the analog warmth and wide range of sounds heard on late ‘60s and early ‘70s FM radio. Brother Matt handles the majority of the lead vocals with Joe helming a few, bringing in his soulful lower register. In many instances their voices blend, echoing with the sound of siblings. Tasteful arrangements complement each composition, with a variety of approaches bringing to mind the best classic rock and pop: Matt goes Cat Stevens-y with the delicate stand-out track "Tear Inside My Eye" and “When Will I See You Again?”. His electric guitar is Neil Young-crunchy on "Where is the Sun" and his acoustic is Lindsay Buckingham-nimble on the folky "Follow You". Meanwhile, Joe's keyboards are funky like Billy Preston for "Sound Asleep" and churchy like Procol Harum on "I Found You".
The catchy "Meet Me In The Middle" bounces along like the theme song from a ‘70s sitcom that never existed. Matt argues that meat is murder in "Can't Be Without You" singing, "What's it like to be tied and then boiled alive?". And "Don’t Unfriend Me" tramples in like an XTC track with Joe expressing that he is willing to take all manner of abuse, so long as he still gets likes: "I saw your anger emoji under the pictures from my destination wedding, but I don’t care if you offend me, please don’t unfriend me, don’t walk away…".
In retrograde? More like one giant leap forward for Big Green.
Big Green's In Retrograde is available now through all major streaming services and also for free at big-green.net