Album review: BRINSLEY SCHWARZ – Shouting At The Moon

Fretsore Records [Release date 14.11.25]

Brinsley Schwarz emerged from the pub rock boom of the early 1970s. They will be best remembered for their infamous press junket in 1970 and a disastrous US debut.

Oh, how times change. ‘Shouting At The Moon’ is the third solo album from Brinsley Schwarz (the man not the band) following ‘Unexpected’ in 2016 and ‘Tangled’ in 2021.

The album’s best tracks emit a soulful groove. ‘What In The World’ pays its dues to Steely Dan with Schwarz’s clipped guitar notes doing a passable Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter impression whilst ‘The Chance’ offers a similar musical lineage.

‘Falling Over Backwards’ continues the cool Rhodes/Hammond configuration (courtesy, another Graham Parker acolyte, James Hallawell). The laid back feel evoking the likes of a Snowy White or Robben Ford.

Like the album as a whole, ‘Nothing Is What It Seems’ has its roots in the late-1970s but now with the spectre of Dire Straits who also emerged from the later pub scene but became stadium rockers. This was perhaps the biggest differentiator: the pub rockers made music to get pissed to without much wider aspiration and punk largely moved into that space.

‘Watch The Moon Come Down’ (a Parker original), ‘Maybe One Day’ and ‘It’s Been A Long Year’ offer some respite from “the groove”. It’s as if there was a conscious doff of the stetson to the more thoughtful pop and tunesmithery characterising Schwarz’s earlier outings and epitomised by the likes of Squeeze. ***1/2

Review by David Randall

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