Roger Ruskin Spear — Unusual
Unusual originally appeared on United Artists(as did Electric Shocks), and it was sadly to be the last solo album from Mr Spear’s. The album offered up eleven tracks in all, and really these followed on with the sonic template as Electric Shocks, with a mostly surreal & comedic dipped mixture of dada pop, jazz, 70’s rock, British music hall mockery, & playful cover versions.
I'm afraid to say that Unusual is sadly some what of a let down, after the mostly consistent Electric Shocks. The album starts off badly with a plainly silly(in a bad way) and annoying cover version of "Pinball Wizard", which features a central comic northern English singing voice & Monty Python like dada/dumb backing vocals. The remainder of the albums 10 tracks go from passable Spear originals like "Trouble With My Trousers"- a jaunting pop/ jazz lined number, with great comic sketch weaved in about submersible trousers. Onto awful cover version like his take on "Heartbreak Hotel"- which is once again filled with stupid voices, and is just too silly for its own good. I think the main problem here is that the focus is on humour more than anything else, you see with Electric Shocks there was a nice balance between good/ clever song writing & humour, but sadly here it’s just too balanced towards comic sounds & voices(which really stretch ones sanity)
As with the Electric Shocks reissue this comes with a 16 page booklet. It takes a whole host of pictures, album artwork, a new three & half page write-up about the album, and then lastly a three & a half page write-up going into details about each of the albums 11 tracks.
As with most reissues put out by Esoteric Records this is another nicely put together package- but sadly the album it’s self is just not up to the standard & quality of the material on Electric Shocks. So really this is just for completist, sure it has it’s moments, but at the end of the day too much of it is bog down in (unfunny) silly-ness.