Warren Zevon hated pop music.
Zevon, the champion of forgotten singer-songwriters, avoided it at all costs with his self-deprecating wit and borderline curiosity with violence. So he battled drugs, alcohol, loose women, rock and roll – and lost.
Zevon died leaving only a footnote on classic rock radio – the Top 40 hit “Werewolves of London.” Pop won the war.
With the weight of a 30-year-old album, Fay Wray picks up the reins left behind with Zevon’s sanity.
Channeling their inner “excitable boy,” Fay Wray’s latest release, “Tug Love,” blurs the line between the madman himself and the unabashed, feel-good pop that Zevon just couldn’t handle.
While basking in a world only Zevon could love, the boys play dress-up in the glitz and pomp of Wings-era Paul McCartney, tipping their collective hat to ’70s powerpop and big band jazz with a smirking hint of Herb Alpert cheese (see the double-tracked trumpet solo on “Around the World”).
Formed in 2004 when its members were just freshmen, Fay Wray has finally found a place for their dark humor and pop orchestras with an album worn-in way beyond their years.
At the piano helm, Kevin Corcoran, mass communication senior, praises pie in the McCartney-esque “Blueberry.”
But it’s the album’s centerpiece, “The Hunger,” that could rival Nick Lowe’s “Cruel to Be Kind” as the crowned king of pop perfection. That’s not to say the band is stuck in a time capsule dated 1978.
Fay Wray pulls out rockers like “Dust in Her Eyes,” with Corcoran’s pipes reaching helter skelter highs, and an ode to failed nationwide one night stands in the sloppy drunk sing-along “You Never Bought Me Flowers,” which would make any warm-blooded New Orleanian proud.
Though drummer Pat Fee, jazz studies senior, hails from the Windy City, “Tug Love” feels more at home in the south, with music industries seniors Michael Girardot and Stephen MacDonald laying on thick brass to fill in the sleepy jazz and set the heavy hitters on fire. Girardot croons like Elvis Costello in the quest for sex in “Lay Me.”
Engineered by Girardot and mixed and mastered by Steve Stokes, music business senior, and Girardot, “Tug Love” is a Loyola classic in the making, grabbing guests and contributors from across campus, including trombonist Daniel Ray, music industries senior, on “Around the World” and the title track, and visual arts senior Molly Reeder, who designed the album art. Former Fay Wray member Charlie Dillingham and Ted Long, music industries junior, play bass.
If only Zevon had an ear for pop – “Tug Love” might make him blush.
Alex Woodward can be reached at [email protected].
