Mooie Garage
Mooie Garage
Big Dipper

Mooie Garage is a one man band where one Jaap delivers everything from composing and performing to production. And with a thank you very much to Tony McPhee on the cover, it can't be all that bad, can it?

Mooie Garage is not moving through blues rock landscape really, but he visits places where many artists have been before him. Some people have raved about this record, but after several rounds in my player, I am not too shure if this is such a great record though. The first few tracks kind of glides by without too much happening with influences from Doors and some krautrock, maybe.

On track 4, everything changes. The tempo doubles and the band name gives more meaning. "When She Comes Around" is a song so genuinely 60's garage that it could easily slip on to the original Nuggets album. Aggressive guitars, marraccases that carry you away and a melody that is so catchy it got to get your head nodding and you foot stomping. If Julian Casablancas fronted The Velvet Underground it would have sounded like this. It's nothing short of a classic!

"Dreamwoods" is a beautiful instrumental track with accoustic guitars, discreet organ and sounds of birds and insects. More "Grantchester Meadows" than "The Grand Vizier's Garden Party", to put it that way. In between you get too much uninspired, blurred rootsy psychedelia too out of focus for me.

So when the inevitable hidden track fades out at the end, I just have to say better luck next time. This because I know Mooie Garage has a lot in him just waiting to be let free.

More information is to be found at Big Dipper.

Copyright © 2003 Pingo