Tim Lee – Under The House / Bobby Sutliff – Perfect Dream
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Posted On March 1, 2003
Bobby Sutliff has all the jangle of Roger McGuinn, his melodic, often ethereal songs ringing with folk-rock, 1960s British pop and a yearning voice that’s the ghost of Alex Chilton. Tim Lee is the more straightforward rocker, his tales cutting to the core with realism, driven home by guitar playing that echoes Neil Young and the Byrds.
Together, they were the core of the Windbreakers, Southern pop favorites who cut a half-dozen records between 1982 and 1991. Both dropped out of sight for years, Sutliff returning in 2000 with Bitter Fruit and now Perfect Dream, Lee with Under The House this January.
Both Sutliff and Lee recall making good music while sleeping on floors. As Sutliff sings on “Kings Of Flannel”: “We were the kings of flannel, and all the critics knew our names/Never made a dime, but that’s OK.” Lee looks back, but ahead, too, on “Everywhere But Here”: “I’ve been everywhere but here, every here but there/I’ve been in the background, hidden from sight/I wanna break out of here and into the light.”
With twelve-string chiming, Sutliff makes missing someone sound appealing on “Long Red Bottle Of Wine”. Same goes for “Blinders”, where acoustic guitar, jangling electric and a shouted “Hey, hey” ring home a fool’s tale. “Mando” and “Foot And Mouth” are also power-pop delights. “Floating”, with echoing guitar, sounds Indian, while the trancelike “Perfect Dream”, with piano and extended guitar lines, fits its name.
Lee opens Under The House with “Keep It True”, a song that could easily be about making music again: “Starting anew after falling off the face of the earth/Gotta keep it true.”
The rocking chorus of “Skating Rink” dead-on describes the small-town trap: “The boys she knows just wanna play/She’s waiting on one that wants to run away.” “Another Day” slows it down a bit, with plain-spoken vocals carrying the resignation of a life where days pass without meaning.
The ominous “Any Part Of This” tells of fleeing something evil, while, pedal to the floor, down “Highway Forty Nine” flies a man running away: “I’ve got your picture on my dash, right next to Jesus.”
