36 years on, a belated second album from a band clearly with unfinished business.
“Windmills On The Moon” is not the first album that The Riflebirds of Portland have put out. Their debut, “April,” garnered some decent reviews, so a follow-up was neither a surprise nor unexpected. The twist in this particular tale, though, is that the debut was in 1989, and it is only now, 36 years later, that the second record is hitting the turntables. The band, then known simply as The Riflebirds, split soon after that debut. Chief songwriter and bassist Lee Oser became a professor of English literature and an author. Singer Kate Oser became a children’s librarian. Lead guitarist Kevin Kraft became a software tester in Silicon Valley.
The exception to this move away from the music industry was drummer Kevin Jarvis, who has worked with the likes of Brian Wilson, Lucinda Williams, and Elvis Costello. He is also an engineer/mixer and owner of The Sonic Boom Room, where the new album was recorded and mixed.
It’s Kate Oser who takes the lead vocals in the main on an album that has folk at its heart, with the odd nod towards a happy, trippy 60s vibe. The record gets a lift when the band veer into something a little more daring and original. ‘My Mournful Bride’, a song about a naïve husband unaware of the fact that he is his wife’s second choice, has a soft shoe shuffle that is unexpectedly emboldened with Dave Ralicke’s trombone interludes. It is a playful little number that stands out for its inventiveness.
Similarly, ‘It Doesn’t Matter Much To Me’ has that something extra about it. With Lee Oser’s bass guitar riff running through the guts of the song, the brief but impressive impact of horns again, and, with Kate Oser morphing into Carly Simon as the song fades, it comfortably deserves its acclaim as the best in show. Songwriter Osler muses that a song originally aimed at the corporates who dress up as political saints and the managerial posturing that is rampant in his own line of work, could, just as easily, be aimed at his own, in his own words, “smelly ambition.”
Those highlights aside, there is, unfortunately, little here to raise the pulse rate on an album that has been decades in the making. Whilst clearly a labour of love and, perhaps, unfinished business for all those involved in that far-off debut, this pleasant and undemanding album is unlikely to have a great impact.
