This is the sound of a nice guy finishing last. David Scott, the unassuming core of Scottish pop outfit The Pearlfishers, has this nice guy thing honed to a fine, fine point. Which, to be direct, he should, considering that he's been playing the angle since 1984, when he recorded his first demos under the ill-advised moniker Chewy Raccoon. Scott obviously spends a lot of time soaking up Burt Bacharach, Brian Wilson and Beatles (his website lists eight Paul McCartney solo records amongst his nineteen favorite albums), as every aspect of his music-- from the syrupy horns and willowy strings to the quasi-jazz chord changes and snatches of harmony vocals-- screams their influence. But if Scott doesn't possess the naturally appealing voice of many of his heroes, he at least gets by on a reedy tenor and enthusiasm.
For Sky Meadows, he's joined by a small orchestra of collaborators. It's much the same setup he employed on 2001's Across the Milky Way, and to a similar result, coating each track in a thick lather of baroque instrumentation. The overall effect, though, is less a channeling of Scott Walker and The Beach Boys than some bizarre midpoint between John Sebastian's "Welcome Back, Kotter" theme and Mike Post's "Hill Street Blues" soundtracks, a too-polite concoction of inflated orch-pop perhaps best referred to as doormat-rock. A guy like Joe Pernice can get away with piling on the sugar like this because his songs are taut and tension-packed, but Scott's melodies and lyrics are too nondescript, and can't fully support the breezy sentimentality of the music without allowing at least some of it melt away into so much fey mush. I could swear I heard "Todd is God" on my last trip to the dentist.
Still, a case could be made that The Pearlfishers are just occupying the niche left vacant by Prefab Sprout in the early 90s, and that such inoffensive indie pop still has its place in the world-- a case I'm not inclined to argue against. Plenty of people will find a lot to enjoy in this little ray of sunshine, even if it's not the masterpiece it wants to be. "My Dad the Weatherfan" is a fine song, for example-- perhaps the best The Pearlfishers have ever served up; with the same kind of bounding rhythm and bubbly piano that made Mull Historical Society's "Watching Xanadu" such a fun trip back to 70s A.M. and a unique lyrical narrative about a son admiring the accuracy of his father's meteorological predictions, it's the kind of bubblegum that doesn't lose its flavor on impact, and it's the song most likely to stick with you when the album's over.
Unfortunately, nothing else reaches that height-- though I should note that there's really no notable low point, either. When closer "Say Goodbye to the Fairground" takes you out on a velvety-smooth ride through Kinksy nostalgia and hazy-eyed reflection, with the whole crew joining in for one last chorus, the sense of community and warmth pretty perfectly closes the book on this collection of songs. It also makes me feel awful for saying anything bad about The Pearlfishers. The reality, though, is that only hardest-core fans of breeze-blown orchestral pop will have any interest in checking this record out-- it's not the one to win any new converts for an already well-plied genre.
