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The Skygreen Leopards, "Disciples of California"
With their latest album of pastoral folk pop, Glenn Donaldson and Donovan Quinn seem determined to let everyone know where they're from, in case there were any doubts.
 
It's not just the insular title of the album that roots them in California, but also the Byrds-esque guitars and light pop harmonies that anchor them as much as anything else. Yet it’s not California as a place to which they lay claim, but rather California as an ideal, and it’s an important distinction that unfortunately makes them anachronistic. Rather than updating or contemporizing the folk sound of the ‘60s to say something about today’s culture, like Donaldson does with some of his other bands, here they revive it mostly intact. Although they do this sort of thing well, it comes across as a form of nostalgia for a time in which the musicians never lived, which is kind of a pointless exercise.
There isn’t a whole lot of ground here that the group didn’t already cover on last year’s Life & Love in Sparrow’s Meadow. One change, however, is the addition of a rhythm section. While the songs lack emotional distinction, it’s only the new rhythm section that lends them any personality. The most redeeming factor of the album is the strange twist of the lyrics, but even these are disguised under so much convention that their impact is lessened, if they’re noticed at all. The smugness of a song like "Jesus Was Californian" doesn’t help things, either.
Don’t get me wrong, the album sounds great for a revival act. The music’s pleasant enough and their harmonies are decent, but the songs don’t say anything to me that I haven’t already heard many times over from the original source material itself. I can’t help wonder why the band would bother other than to prove that they can.
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