Reviewed by Jessica Shearer
Legal Tender/Carbon McCartney
If Legal Tender were actually a band, they’d probably find no place here as much as I adore Carbon McCartney. However, Legal Tender is simply the name of the project from singer/songwriter Eric Davenport. Although he does employ extra musicians such as drummer Tony Hart and back-up vocalist Jennifer Keenan, this is Davenport’s baby, his labor of love. Davenport nearly does everything here, and shockingly it sounds like a band effort, a tight, hook-laden power-pop record that looks to the late ’60s and early ’70s for a creative charge.
Davenport mines a handful of nearly extinct genres here from Beatles-styled guitar rock to glam to psychedelia to AM radio pop. The production frees itself from the artificial slickness and audio distortion of today’s recordings for a much clearer and classic-sounding mix. You can actually hear each instrument separately; they don’t blur together in the songs, lost in a maze of white noise. The tunes rent shelf space in your head for weeks; that’s how memorable they are, especially “Hey Little Girl” and “Windy.”
