Tuned To Love - The Loose Salute Album Review

The Loose Salute: link

Album Review

At a time when the word is out to "Kill All Hippies", The Loose Salute bravely deploys a most welcome snog-happy, war-weary and fun-loving album... a hippy one!

And surprisingly, although blatantly anchored in the past, 'Tuned to Love' is a rather refreshing little sonic collation, perfectly graced with sunbeam, at risk of deeming it seasonal.

This is a greatly hedonistic record we've got here, as showcased by the two female vocalists (Lisa Billson and Charlotte King) on 'From Head to Sandy Toes', as they sing "we just want to let the sunshine in".

Song on, the album would make the undreamed of soundtrack for a remake of Back to the Future, exploring many genres: country ('Turn The Radio Up' , folk ('Photographs and Tickets' and 'Cold Water') , happy-clappy surf rock (recently revived by the Magic Numbers) on the same 'From Head to Sandy Toes', protest song or even glam rock, while still retaining the peaceful feel, promised on the cover sleeve -two people perfectly in tune with each other, floating above the ground, surrounded and even gagged by a Fuji color rainbow... Heaven as we should know it!

Genres which do force nostalgic comparisons: think Beach Boys ('Death Club'), Mamas and Papas ('Tuned to Love'), Pink Floyd ('Ship on the Ocean'), T-Rex (Stratosphere to the Bars'), and more contemporarily, Elliott Smith meets The Thrills (in Ian McCutcheon's vocals).

While overall, the album will give their money worth to all the shiny happy people out there, it also treads in melancholic and miserabilist territory, as conveyed in Ian McCutcheon's singing on 'The Mutineer' and the Lennon-vs.-Elliott Smith 'Ballad of the Dumb Angel'. Similarly, Lisa Billson emphatically whimpers the peacemaker 'Why'd We Fight?'

It's only fair to say that through perseverance _ 'Tuned to Love' was originally released in 2007 and "due to public demand" or more plausibly a blessing undisguised in getting signed to Heavenly Records_, this Cornwall-based quintet presents us with an album worth being loosely saluted!

Solange Moffi