John Terrill - Frowny Frown

John Terrill (JT) was the man who provided the backbeat for the Gizmos reunion shows as well as for

Indiana legends the Dancing Cigarettes. Eric Weddle, who honked on his sax for the Gizmos, released this CD, John's pop opus that spanned ten years in the making and is an incredibly ambitious piece of work.

John obviously has wildly eclectic tastes and likes a little bit of a lot of things and it all comes through on this album. Primarily 60's styled melodic, harmony-based pop music, ala the Beach Boys or later, mellower Velvet Underground, JT includes lots more, from extremely effective percussion to clarinet, sax, trumpet, cello, harpsichord, and everything else that he plays himself. All of this and other items (studio effects like backwards tracking) gives hints of psych-era Beatles, Who-pop, Dylan and hints of lots of other bands and songs.

What we get is almost an hour's worth of quality pop that I think the cats from International Pop Overthrow would go ga-ga over. Well crafted tunes and well thought-out production. Mighty impressive!