The Recliners, Velvet Elvis,Houston, TX, September 6, 1997
A favorite Austin band of mine, The Recliners offer lounge style covers of classictunes like "Back in Black", "White Wedding", "Girlfriend in aComa", "Stairway to Heaven", and "Come As You Are", as well asgreat original material in "Deeper and Deeper" and "Different Games".This is now actually the third time I've seen them, so check out my review of their Club Chicago show. While their songs are great fun, this band has some great musicians. Neal Mehta is leadsinger and has a great cheesey lounge style to accompany his beautiful voice. He soundslike a cross between Frank Sinatra and Bill Murray, when he did his lounge bit on SNL(Nick Slopes at the ski resort, etc.). He along with Russell Young, keyboards and horns,and Eric Calistri on guitar, write the original stuff and do the arrangements of thecovers. They often add cute and unusual things to songs, for instance, at the end of TomJones' "She's a Lady", a clever little Metallica riff is thrown in. I was giventhe title of elitist by Neal for catching that one, but I insisted it was more akin toBeavis. Ready to embark on a West Coast tour, The Recliners are poised to take advantage of thecurrent trend for the alternative to alternative following the lead of Squirrel NutZippers and Big Bad Voodoo Daddies. I got a sneak preview of their video for "Back inBlack", which is really good, combining a performance at The Ritz in Austin with theband members as characters in the video. These are fun, nice guys, so check them out... On That Note, I'm outta here...... C |
