The Beauty Shop - 'Yard Sale' (Snapper) Released 10/04/06

Hardly a new album, The Beauty Shop’s ‘Yard Sale’ is in fact a compilation of their previous two releases. The recent Johnny Cash biography ‘Walk The Line’ might have had a little to do with this, having caused a rash of Cash ‘Best Of's’ to break out in record shops everywhere and bringing God fearing Country-rock back en vogue. The Beauty Shop’s fire was fanned yet further by Maxim Magazine listing their track ‘I Got Issues’ with it’s oompa loompa bass line, as the number four song to download if you’re missing Johnny Cash. But is their music strong enough to stand on its own two feet once the Cash Callipers have been removed?

The opening track ‘Monsters’ immediately puts you in a good mood. Sounding quite like Jose Gonzalez’s version of The Knife's ‘Heartbeats’ in parts, its summery, delicate strumming evokes the smell of barbeques and washing on the line. Singer Joel Hoeffleur’s deep bear-with-a-sore-head drawl is a refreshing change to the clean cut All American voice that usually fits this genre. Lyrically, it seems the numerous comparisons to Leonard Cohen are not unfounded. ‘Paper Hearts For Josie’ is gentle, lulling and sounds like the break up music from an episode of The OC, as a worldly-wise Hoeffleur slates “kids these days”. Whilst ‘Babyshaker’, which gives the album a kick up the arse, laments the outbreak of teeny-bopper singers and hammers home the fact that they’ll never compare to a rock n roll band.

However, Hoeffleur’s flat line baritone begins to weigh heavily on your shoulders at times, producing the niggling feeling that if you could just get some jump leads and give the guy a jolt, everything would be ten times better. He also has a rather annoying tendency to add syllables and vowels to most words, like sleep: “slee-heep” and cheek: “chee-heek”, which despite some lovely melodies and subtly humorous lyrics, does begin to gra-hate.