Flower Children
Chicago Rock Café is probably the one venue you want to play at if you get a gig at In The City, it’s the only one of the venues in town that is constantly populated by a whole menagerie of reviewers, managers, A&R scouts and anybody else that feels the need to be seen in the right place at the right time. So it all bodes well for Radio Luxembourg, they get a decent crowd of industry types in and proceed to entertain them with their brand of paisley pop psychedelia.
It's not just the tunes that sound like they come from the early 70s, the clothes fit the bill too with a nice array of patterned jumpers and flowery shirts on display. Radio Luxembourg do everything well and they do everything very nicely; the keyboard sounds nice, the harmonies are nice, the guitars are jangly (and nice) and it's all just lovely but there's absolutely no edge to it whatsoever. After two or three songs it just sounds like psyche by numbers of the kind that you would find on any of the Pye psyche compilations, it doesn't have the grit, melody or inventiveness of bands like The Soundtrack of Our Lives or even Cardiacs for instance.
The too cool for skool indie crowd lap it up of course but half the songs are so light and airy that they sound like comedy numbers. Yes the harmonies are great and they'll be fun to dance around to when you've had a few but they lack any real substance or longevity. The final song is as close as they come to anything of real interest with some big sounding guitars and chorus to match but it's too little too late. They clearly have the talent and the potential to do something really interesting but they seem to be some way off it at the moment.