Sitting through Dan Sartain’s entertainingly twangy and nourish new album, ‘Lives!’ is a little like watching someone put together a 15” replica of Joe Meek’s legendary Holloway Road studios made almost entirely out of matchsticks. You’d be hard pressed not be dazzled by how faithful the record is to all those fusty old analogue methods used by folks like Meek and how much mouldy, authentic dust the whole sound has acquired, but as loyal and ostensibly affectionate the record is to that whole era, you may be left slightly unmoved and unaffected by it all. Tellingly, when Sartain ditches the twangy surf-guitars and the skiffly ‘Solihull-Sound’ of 60s beatniks, The Applejacks, as he does on the Hammond-weary, ‘What You Gonna Do?’ it works terrifically well. On other occasions it’s more like a trainspotter guide to 60s blues and surf retro: ‘Those Thoughts’ (Johnny Kid and the Pirates), ‘Praying For A Miracle’ (Iggy Pop’s ‘Passengers’), ‘Ruby Carol’ (Johnny Cash). Real triumphs are saved for the steamy Glitter Rock of ‘Anything I Say’ and new single, ‘Atheist Funeral’ – all snarling bass guitar and creeping, decaying drum skins.
Chockful of classic Ludwig drum patterns, growling Mustang and Jazzmaster riffs and frankly shitloads of reverb, it’s a gorgeously gothic affair, with more voodoo and horror than an entire season of Twilight Zones.
File alongside feisty fellow time-travel capers like The Raveonettes, Pop Levi, Billy Idol, Clinic and Glasgow’s Sons and Daughters. 
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