AMG Review of Mobile Chateau

Matt Collar
All Music Guide

The follow-up to 2007's Unfamiliar Faces, 2010's Mobile Chateau finds singer/songwriter Matt Costa infusing his melodic '80s-influenced pop with a vintage '60s-inspired sound. If Costa revealed himself to be an obsessive Anglophile in the past, his Brit-centric approach is only amplified here with a sound that brings to mind the best of the mid-'60s Invasion. This is a gorgeously garage-sounding album with organic percussion instruments, crackling tube-driven amps, and jangly guitars cascading in every direction from your speakers. More mod than Morrissey this time around, here Costa evokes the atmospheric echo-chamber sound of the Zombies on "The Season" and the funky 12-string guitar swirl of the Byrds on "Witchcraft." Elsewhere, much like the rest of Mobile Chateau, such standout tracks as the midtempo driver "Johnny's Love of Majik" and the spaghetti Western-inspired "Can You Tell Me" are pitch-perfect psych-pop nuggets that immediately sink into your pop-loving soul.