Mike Donovan
How To Get Your Record Played in Shops

I was anticipating this album with a certain curiosity (as with every Drag City release) and I must say that this time, unlike, for example, "Hippo Lite" by Drinks (Cate Le Bon and Tim Presley), my expectations were not disappointed. In that case, two artists who might have combined into an interesting "combo" in a different format, like Mick Harvey reinterpreting Serge Gainsbourg perhaps (but maybe that's shooting too high), instead got lost in minimal experimental attempts that musically translated—given the context—into that phenomenon the English call "frost boils." In other words, "mud bubble." But Mike Donovan, on the other hand, is a more seasoned and intelligent musician than Cate and Tim, probably better, and with his second solo album, he hits the mark precisely, revealing that compositional talent that was already recognized after a long and glorious tenure in the US garage scene over the last twenty years.

This album revives Donovan's career (in the sense that it renews it with vigor and the right and necessary freshness) after the end of experiences with Sic Alps and Peacers, in a new format that summarizes that lo-fi and abstract inspiration of Jad Fair and Daniel Johnston and the Stephen Malkmus attitude, which has inevitably shaped an entire generation of American musicians and beyond. But there is much more. Donovan has always named Todd Rundgren and Syd Barrett as his main points of reference. Besides, Robyn Hitchcock, who is generally considered as Syd Barrett's principal disciple, but who in my opinion has now formed his own authenticity. The comparison, in fact, does not stand, because the record, on the other hand, lacks that "entertainer" style and regularity which today is typical of Hitchcock's serial productions, but the two giants of the sixties psychedelia are instead duly honored here in a series of asynchronous compositions ("Great Unknowing", "Montera Select Niteclub", "Top Shop"...), minimal experimentalism ("Rosemarie"), and visionary and jazzy piano ballads like "Sadfinger", "Sugar Shaker", then the more characteristic tributes to Syd Barrett such as "3 Track Seizure" that almost makes you feel like listening to "Opel", or "Four Armed Star", "Chapel of Peace", "Fox News Coverage '68", and then the very particular arrangements of "Cold Shine". The song and dance man blues of "Spiral Tee Shirt".

If I say that the final result is one of the most interesting garage pop-psychedelia albums I've listened to in recent years, I'm not far from the truth. Actually, for once, I'm happy to say that "How To Get Your Record Played In Shops" is an album that gave me much more than I expected, and in the end, these are the cases that give meaning to music as much as to life: without twists and turns, after all, we're only talking about routine business.