CD REVIEW: BOB EVANS – Car Boot Sale

Shane | 22 July 2016 | Reply

CD REVIEW: BOB EVANS – Car Boot Sale
EMI
17 June, 2016
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar
7 ½ /10

In another life he’s Kevin Mitchell, shouty guitar spanker for ‘90s alt-punk band Jebediah, but in Bob Evans mode he is a wistful, suburban, Aussie Bob Dylan, cannily writing songs about the minutae of everyday life and the characters we meet on our travels.

Don’t Give Up On Yourself is a slightly sad and restrained message of hope that sounds like it comes from someone who knows how hard it can be sometimes. Cold Comfort and Old News mine similar fields of self-doubt, Evans/Mitchell looking back over mistakes or mis-steps or best-efforts-fallen-short and wondering aloud what else could have been done.

On Car Boot Sale he’s melded the pop leanings of 2013’s not-quite-all-there Familiar Stranger with the acoustic bard-feel of his previous three solo albums. It makes the sadness sadder and the jauntiness of tracks like Happy Tears (a number which brings to mind the likes of Karl Wallinger’s World Party) and Matterfact even jauntier.

Ron Sexsmith is a hilarious yet gentle diatribe against one of those know-it-all-but-know-nothing types you find at cocktail parties and backstage at gigs all over the world.

Some People is another scratch of the head, this time at all the dickheads and cheats and posers and scammers who drain us every day. A few ultra-tasteful strings enhance a sparse arrangement which is basically Evans plus guitar, singing love to the only ones who matter. Stuck On You has a far more lush arrangement, but similar subject matter.

The concept of a car boot sale is inherently suburban: rounding up whatever tat is lying around the house and trying to flog it off cut price in a freezing cold carpark at dawn. I don’t know – maybe Evans/Mitchell accumulated these songs over the years, but they certainly don’t sound anything other than completely coherent and completely complementary, both musically and lyrically.

Maybe he just liked the idea of the title? Whichever, Car Boot Sale is Evans at his finest, and these songs grow on the listener with each successive listen.