True West
Drifters

The Paisley Underground scene was decidedly more interesting than critics considered it at the time. Take for example True West and their best album, the often underrated "Drifters," which is sometimes labeled as the "poor cousin" of the much-celebrated works by Steve Wynn's contemporaneous Dream Syndicate, with whom Russ Tollman and Gavin Blair had played in the legendary "The Suspects." Indeed, "Drifters," rediscovered now in the recent anthology "Kaleidoscope," has wonderfully stood the test of time. True West was never as inspired again as during that distant summer of 1984. History tells us they never had a real second chance to prove it, but their subsequent efforts were disappointing.

Compared to the beginnings of "Hollywood Holyday," the progress in "Drifters" is significant. Maybe it loses a bit of aggressiveness and veers away from those garage echoes that were so in vogue at the time of "Lucifer Sam." However, this ventures into a territory that, in my opinion, is even more interesting, one that brings the singing and the acid jingle-jangle of the guitars closer to the dogma of their natural godfather, that Tom Verlaine who, a few years later, even tried to produce the band.

The level of the songs is, in my opinion, very high. From the initial "Look Around," where McGrath’s playing is clearly reminiscent of the Television sound, to the superb mid-tempo of "At Night They Speak." Also to Blair's voice’s credit, which renders some ballads original, ones that someone else might have interpreted in a much more banal manner. I think of the next "Speak Easy" for instance, where the Velvetian electric strumming ends up recalling bands like REM itself, true icons of the 80s college rock sound. Another example is "Shot You Down," a brilliant guitar drive that winks at what was the sound of the Feelies and Hoboken in the '80s, concluding the first side with the magnificent "What About You," perhaps my favorite: melancholic and dreamy, with McGrath and Tollman sitting next to master Verlaine, stealing from his guitar tapestries.

Side two opens with the bang of "Hold On," a great song with strong guitar-pop flavors. Here, echoes of Flying Nun and distant hemispheres even chase each other, but Blair's voice and Byrdsian guitars quickly bring everyone back home. As also in the next "And Then the Rain," already known in a more "sixties" version on the previous debut mini. Chris Cacavas’s keyboards punctuate the guitar rock of "Backroad Bridge Song (What Could I Say)" and the guest appearance serves as an "official induction" for a band that thus fully enters the close-knit family of Paisley Underground. There remains space for a brief and interesting acoustic parenthesis "Ain’t No Hangman" and for the splendid close of "Morning Light," one of the group's manifesto songs. So, this is the record, and for a moment it seemed that True West could have made it to unlock the power of the majors lining up for the new "Next Big Thing." But that was not the case, of course. After an exhausting European tour supporting REM, the guys stopped seeing eye to eye, and things quickly got complicated. The sales of “Drifters” were disappointing despite the French press on New Rose ensuring a certain distribution spread. Shortly after the album, the band broke up due to the usual internal problems and great expectations that were not met. The real hidden leader, Russ Tollman, left the band orphaned, a band that meanwhile, in 1986, was hastily reformed, perhaps in the belated attempt to catch the success train together with the dream syndicate… but as sadly known, time flies, and the days of wine and roses had just ended.