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Album Details

• Artist: Wayne Omaha
• Album: Let It Mellow
• Label: Scratch
• Year of Release: 2004
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: rbidet on 2004-12-04

Toronto's Wayne Omaha manage to name check not only The Velvet Underground, but also their acolytes Yo La Tengo, Galaxie 500 and Luna in their bio, which risks making themselves out to be a third generation copy. Really, their take on the nuts-and-bolts songwriting and uncomplicated drive of the VU is much more convincing and original than that. One of the wrinkles is the country influences that crop up in a few tunes. Though these are interesting and certainly make the pedigree of Wayne Omaha less narrow, those songs ("A Girl Named Lee", and "Easier to Breathe") are the least memorable; better are the songs that hew closer to the bands rock influences. "Moonlight" has an unstoppable, straight-as-an-arrow beat over a two chord vamp that suddenly morphs onto a funky Leon Russell type of country-funk groove. Sounds dubious, I know, but the loose playing and the catchy simplicity of the ideas works. The opener "It's Alright" is the highlight of the disc, a brawny bar-room rocker that also benefits from the same qualities as all of Let it Mellow does: excellent recording quality and impassioned, idiosyncratic singing. Wayne Omaha has made an album of some timeless rock and roll influences with enough of their own slant to render Let it Mellow both familiar and new.

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