Gallimaufry

AMG Review of Gallimaufry

Stewart Mason
All Music Guide

Bob Vickers has spent the last decade and a half on the fringe of the Bay Area power pop scene, first as one-half of the appealingly quirky one-off Cerebral Corps, whose Attributed to Cerebral Corps was probably the best thing Alias Records ever released that involved neither Yo La Tengo nor the Loud Family, and later as the drummer of the fantastic but frustratingly non-prolific Orange Peels. His brother Rob Vickers (credited with lead vocals, guitar, and keyboards) is a figment of his own imagination. Together (?), they're the Incredible Vickers Brothers, and their debut album Gallimaufry is a fine example of the more twee end of power pop. The album was produced by Allen Clapp (who also plays percussion and Mellotron) and recorded in Clapp's home studio, so this is fundamentally an Orange Peels record with Clapp and Vickers' band roles reversed. (The third OP, bassist Jill Pries, makes a guest appearance on the minute-long surf-twang instrumental "Ballad of an Orange Peel," which is just the sort of brief mid-album interlude the band's own albums tend to have.) Vickers even exhibits a similar sense of sunshine pop winsomeness on frustrated love songs like "Top of the Stairs" and "Girl and Her Time," as well as a similarly playful sense of humor on the tongue-in-cheek braggadocio of the jaunty "We're Gonna Get Along Fine" and the mock-1920s closer "Record Collection Blues," a ukulele-driven Rudy Vallée pastiche about a poor sap whose ex-wife has stolen all his favorite records that features lines like "I know to err is human, but please bring back the Randy Newman." That kind of musical and lyrical cleverness is on full display throughout Gallimaufry, but it's low-key enough that the songs' hooks often don't come into full focus until after two or three listens. It's an endearing and entertaining solo debut nonetheless.