ANTON BARBEAU ~ PLASTIC GUITAR

Another dozen psychedelic pop jewels from the ever prodigous Anton Barbeau. This album was recorded in Oxford, Cambridge, and his hometown Sacramento. Guests include Kimberly Rew (of The Soft Boys, and Katrina & the Waves), and Barry Melton (of Country Joe & the Fish) on a track each. The Melton-featured track 'I Used to Say Your Name' is among the highlights, with a haunting refrain and the feel of a lost jangling-period REM song of lost love.

Reviewed in Dream Magazine by George Parsons, USA

Genial Sacramento eccentric Anton Barbeau travels to England for this one, and writes about same for his first song, no less. Other selections highlight the thin line between Esperanto and joyous gibberish, with backwards - and impossibly basso background vocals tossed up and in like kippers for a salad. When essaying a disco song he dredges one impressive funk-booty bass line but calls "rain" the "Raino" so as to agitate scansion. He also drags in two samples, one of a comely sounding lass intoning "mouth on mouth," the other of an even-comelier-sounding lass saying "tongue," and for all the incessant repetition, it sounds just a little bit more like a party than a porno.

One forgives Anton almost anything; his mesmerizing gift for catchiness keeps even his excesses from aggravating. The added conundrum on his latest comes from the forthright Jesus kick. That's the Man from Galilee getting name-checked on 'Say It With Ease', and the Man's big bad daddy appealed to on 'Boat Called Home.' The newfangled religion throws other pieces into a certain relief - 'Banana Song' gets a throat-scratchy reworking from the festive original ten years back, as the feeling mounts that the "you" supplicated to in the lyrics equals the "you" in Bob Dylan's firmly gospel 'I Believe In You'. Bob wants his personal mistreatment enshrined as devotion and Anton wants a banana for his sins. I think you call that the singularity of individual souls. Bracing, yes, and a bit baffling, until you remember Anton was always three-dimensional. I am no Christian, and I'll stop there on that, but by the time you hear deeply it's too late for hate. I'll take him under my wing and tell him it's not time for him to die. If that is what he really needs.

Reviewed in the San Diego Reader by Andrew Hamlin, USA

The first track on Plastic Guitar is titled 'Bending Like A Spoon'. The song comes off as heady and cheesy at the same time. And, guess what? It works. It works incredibly well as a matter of fact. I guess I should clarify things a bit by saying that this is not the kind of stuff that I would normally listen to. So, that said, writing a knowledgeable and deserving review is a bit of a task. But, here goes… This is pop, that I’m sure of. It’s smooth and polished which I’m also sure of. Infectious would be a very proper cliché to use. Seems I’ve listened to this cd four or five times already and I’ve only had it a couple of days. Fun? Definitely. For everyone? Probably not, but if you own anything by Matthew Sweet, or The Beatles, or Marshall Crenshaw, or Redd Kross, or Weezer, etc… etc… etc… then it’s a safe bet that this is probably for you.

Reviewed at Ear Candy by J.R. Oliver, USA

Now that I've pretty much abandoned all pretence of prog content and am just banging on about things I like in the dying moments of the column, I feel I must register my love of Plastic Guitar (Pink Hedgehog), the umptillionth album by acoustic guitar-toting Sacramento psych sage Anton Barbeau. Prolific as Barbara Cartland he may be, yet somehow his inbuilt quality control never so much as wavers. Plastic Guitar sees him flexing that limitless imagination to delightful effect ('Quorn Fingers', 'Bending Like a Spoon') and, in the beguiling triptych of 'Dear Miss', 'I Used To Say Your Name' and 'Boat Called Home', gifting us with his most affecting compositions yet.

Reviewed in Shindig! by Marco Rossi, UK

Yet another winner from the psychedelic troubadour whose unique and brilliantly produced music usually showcases a glittering extrovert, drunkenly swaggering through the best of British pop, rock and folk to build something marvellous, chaotic and colourful as seen from America’s West Coast. Usually. If 2007’s Apple Sun was Ant’s Sgt Pepper then Plastic Guitar is probably his Let It Be, or maybe his Abbey Road. Mellower than previous works, it offers Ant as introvert: a man doing a lot of thinking and re-assessing. I quote those later Beatles albums (the Fabs are name checked in at least two songs - and you’d swear they’re doing harmonies on ‘Better Drink Your Water’) because, towards the end, they wrote songs that sounded less like pop and more like hymns - and there really is no hiding the fact that Ant has been thinking about God. ‘Boat Called Home’, ‘Say It With Ease’ and ‘I Used To Say Your Name’ (with its incredible electric guitar by Barry Melton) brings ‘god’ to the fore in a way that no other Ant album has. I don’t know if he’s just "got" religion, always had it, or
is just using ‘god’ as a focus for introspection, but this new preoccupation renders much of Plastic Guitar elegiac and thoughtful.

And, like those later Beatles albums, this is also a less psychedelic offering from Ant. But, don’t worry, it’s still chaotic and marvellous, and the fun’s still there: in the lyrics and uncorrected vocals (stand up Su Jordan) of ‘Banana Song’, the psychedelia of ‘Doctor Take Care’, and the insane whimsy of ‘Quorn Fingers’ (this album’s ‘Revolution # 9’). The catchy tunes that Ant so brilliantly crafts are here, too; the title track ploughs along like folk meeting new wave; amusing stalker love-song ‘Dear Miss’ expands in the mind the more you hear it (sounding like Lennon and Bowie should have done when they recorded together in the 70s); and ‘Bending Like A Spoon’ is a mini-epic, of intense guitaring. In fact, it’s the guitars that, quite appropriately, drive the album forward, solidly and efficiently, without being showy. One outstanding example is the work in ‘Eye Kinda’, another very Lennon-sounding song. But Plastic Guitar’s standout track is ‘Raino Disco’, whose drum machine, bass and looped vocal samples produce a brilliantly hypnotic, pulsing groove. This is a very modern psychedelia that only leaves me with anticipation for the day Anton records his White Album.

Reviewed in Music-Zine by Elton Townend Jones, UK

SOUNDS LIKE? The aural equivelent of some distant uncle coming up to you at a family wedding and saying, "I'm bonkers, me." before going on to tell you a joke you don't understand that leaves him in fits of giggles. As you leave you spot the same uncle trying to pin a pointy party hat to a pot plant. You later learn that a distant uncle was Syd Barrett and he wasn't your uncle, he just turned up with four camels and an aging Bonnie Tyler and no one had the heart to tell him he was dead. And if you can imagine what that sounds like then you are probably wrong, but closer than you were before you read this.

IS IT ANY GOOD? I really like the song 'Banana'. It sounds mournful, but keeps me laughing. Basically, psychedelic type musings from a mostprolific Californian who has somehow ended up here in England, probably something to do with drugs, although most musicians and singers don't mention drugs in their music, there are only so many references that can be made to drugs in the world, and Hip-Hop is taking up everyones quota. And anyway, psychedelic music isn't made with the help of drugs anymore, it's made by people who have listened to lots of people who used to take drugs in the Sixties, back when the drugs had drugs in them rather than rat shavings and dog polish. That was the basic sum up, in which I managed to not only miss the point, but blunt it entirely. Playing with styles like a child plays with carcasses found in the road (which means with a sense of ghoulish wonder and the fear you may be spotted by an adult) Anton manages to craft song after song of irreverent charm that probably has a massive fanbase who all listen to Radio 6 and prefer the countryside to people. I'm not one of those people, but I did find enough on this CD to entertain me for a while, which is all you can really hope for in a world full of smug pretentious teenagers wearing tight trousers and claiming their music cures cancer, poverty, war and irony in varying degrees. Oh, and he wrote a song asking for a banana that you can hold a lighter in the air to (or mobile phone, it depends how old you are).

Reviewed at Unpeeled by Chris Watson, UK

The prolific Sacramentan’s 13th album (and sixth in the last three years!) is another wild carnival ride of 60’s pop, 21st century laptop bleeps, and sentimental bedsit fare. Barbeau’s developed a nasally Bowie-meets Peter Murphy drawl over the years and this is the first thing that leaps out at you on ‘Bending Like A Spoon’ and the title track, but it’s his knack for crafting irresistibly catchy melodies that will stay with you as you proceed through these dozen tracks. While Kimberley Rew stops by to provide the "cat yowl fadeout guitar" (on ‘Doctor Take Care’), it’s his Soft Boy partner Robyn Hitchcock that might spring to mind on that infectious title track. Even the melancholic heartfelt ballads (like ‘Dear Miss’) are tinged with a spirit-lifting, upbeat melody not unlike the brokenhearted ditties that Robert (The Cure) Smith dashes off with such aplomb. Years of touring tea shops and stone circles throughout Britain have imbued his work with a very British sensibility, most evident on the quietly introspective bedsitter images created on tracks like the aforementioned ‘Dear Miss’ and ‘I Used To Say Your Name,’ featuring Barry "The Fish" Melton on guitar.

Al Stewart, Nick Drake, and Bert Jansch may have been quite influential on this aspect of his songwriting, which has resulted in one of his quietest albums to date. The occasional downbeat mood is lifted considerably by Ant’s vaudevillian barrelhouse piano stomping on ‘Quorn Fingers,’ which sounds like the background music to one of those extended (silent) Benny Hill skits. Not everything is successful: the goofy vocal improvisations and sound effects on ‘Quorn Fingers’ are unnecessary, while the childishly silly ‘Banana’ is immature and musically challenged and sounds like something John Lennon and Harry Nilsson tossed off in the midst of a three-day bender. But there’s enough carefully constructed arrangements and warm self-reflective tunes to warrant repeated listens. Overall, it’s another well-crafted variety
of tunes for fans of vintage Bowie, Drake, Stewart, Hitchcock and similar singer/songwriters.

Reviewed at Terrascope Online by Jeff Penczak, UK

Plastic Guitar is the umpteenth album by Sacramento/Oxford-based singer/songwriter ANTON BARBEAU. For those who’ve followed the impish psych popster over the course of his career, it’ll be no surprise that this is a strong record. Barbeau is one of those rare artists who seem incapable of failure; between his melodic superpowers and penchant for oddball (but rarely weird for weird’s sake) arrangements, Barbeau’s music is unfailingly interesting. Of course, listeners with a low threshold for lyrical playfulness might be put off by silly songs like 'Raino Disco (Bout the Raino)', 'Quorn Fingers' and 'Bending Like a Spoon', but they shouldn’t dismiss him because of a sense of childlike whimsy. (Besides, Barbeau records are like LOUD FAMILY albums – it’s just not the same without the screwing around between more conventional songs). Like spiritual compatriots ROBYN HITCHCOCK, SCOTT MILLER or – yes, I’ll say it – SYD BARRETT, Barbeau hides his feelings behind wordplay, but he’s perfectly capable of lucid emotional moments. If anything, Plastic Guitar contains some of his most naked work – the marriage of melody and feeling on 'I Used to Say Your Name', 'Doctor Take Care' and Boat Called Home' is what the phrase “music with heart” is all about. Even the remake of his old tune 'Banana Song', while eye-rolling on the surface, has a desperate undercurrent that lifts it beyond mere novelty status. Barbeau is in full command of his considerable powers here, making Plastic Guitar one of the brightest highlights in a shiny catalog.

Reviewed at The Big Takeover by Michael Toland, USA

The transplanted Californian pysch-pop wunderkind Anton Barbeau has issued six albums from his Cambridge bolt hole in the past three years alone. Yet, while his heroes Julian Cope, Robyn Hitchcock and XTC’s Andy Partridge spew copious volumes of lysergic miniatures in the wake of once widespread fame, Barbeau has arrived at cult status from a standing start. His 13th release opens misleadingly with the drum-machine clatter of 'Bending Like a Spoon', so skip to the baroque hymnal of 'Boat Called Home', the echo chamber acoustic ballad 'Say It with Ease' and 'Banana Song', a nonsense anthem recalling the Rutles’ tea-drinking period.

Reviewed in The Sunday Times by Stewart Lee, UK

Would you believe this is Anton’s 13th album and his 6th since 2006? Recorded in Oxford, Cambridge and Sacramento and featuring guest appearances from members of The Soft Boys, CAKE as well as Barry Melton (yes, he of Country Joe and the Fish, all bow down!) it is of course idiosyncratic, psychedelic and features "a variety of styles, from 60’s-vibed classic pop to laptop bleep-bop and electro-Kraut grooves" all delivered in a classic nasal vocal we have grown to know and love. A couple of up tempo, strident songs give way just on time to a ballad of sorts ‘Doctor Take Care’ and, already, you’re wondering what kind of experiences this man has and then make your mind up it doesn’t really matter if you reach deeper meanings or not because it’s all so damned infectious! By the time another slowie ‘Dear Miss’ comes along you’re pretty well hooked and before you know where you are the strummed acoustic guitar intro of ‘I Used To Say Your Name’ has taken you away - the best song so far I would say and with a country tinge too.

That is until you hear the next one, the beautifully heartfelt ‘Boat Called Home’, a song of personal search if ever I heard one, a bit like an old Robbie Robertson ballad. Anton gets into a hypnotic groove on ‘Raino Disco’ dominated by a repetitive bassline that perhaps overstays its welcome a bit at nearly 8 minutes in length (‘70’s psycho-disco Anton calls it) which is contrast to the laid back acoustic "Jesus-folk" of ‘Say It With Ease’. I am back agonising about meanings again on ‘Banana Song’ but why bother - it can be frustrating listening to Anton Barbeau’s music but that is undoubtedly part of its allure! Sometimes the lyrics seem ‘throw away’ (but something else tells me they’re not!) as on the country rock pastiche ‘Better Drink Your Water’ otherwise ‘John the Baptist will be ‘coming after you’! Enigmatic but ultimately enjoyable.

Reviewed in Zeitgeist by Phil Jackson, UK