Written by: Dave Cantrell
Where to start, where to start. Maybe with history, that’s generally a safe bet and indeed insofar as Mr. Bobby Conn is concerned it’s a wise one as well seeing as much of his work – not least the latest called Bobby’s Place that released August 22nd on the august Tapete label – is a sly piece of work that fits with a gentle yet somehow vertigo-inducing ease inside the old but trustworthy saw ‘a conundrum wrapped inside an enigma, ‘ an assessment we believe the indefatigable Mr. Conn would not find displeasing, a conclusion supported not simply by the content within – patience; we’ll get to it in a sec – but the very fact that said new record’s front and back are labeled ‘Side A’ and ‘Side One.’ Flippin’ crazy or what but no matter, it’s the content that, umm, matters and by that metric what’s found hereon is fine and fetching enough he could have decided to go with ‘side Blorg’ and ‘side Flump’ for all we care. This is good stuff, great stuff even, inventively catchy, breezy in its way but daringly so and, more than anything, precisely the type album we’ve hungered for without even knowing we were until it flooded our eardrums with endorphins and their pal dopamine. So, welcome to Bobby’s Place, where…
“Jay & Bee” burbles into existence like a couple of mischievous teenager aliens, half-human half-mutant doing the slinky boogaloo space age-style before ceding the floor to “Wretched”‘s all-encompassing moodiness that takes the term ‘ambient’ and spirals it upward into an atmosphere more than amply tinged with complexity, in the process boosting the concept of a ‘quiet storm’ into an intricately spooked firmament and so goes the flow in the place Mr. Conn calls home.
Be it the sudden urgency that overtakes “All For You” and ramps it up into a giddy outer stratosphere, planets stars the whole shebang spinning on the fringes; the title track’s bespoke pop swing that invites one and all into its perfectly pastiched dreamscape that betokens with an unforced ease the Carnably Streets of our collecctive memory and on and on we go, rollin’ down the rocking alleys of a yesteryear come newly alive with your standard irresistible “boppa-ba-ba“s (“Never Felt Better”), the T.Rex-ified surge and spunk of the aptly titled “Sixties Babies” that also occurs in final (and, again, quite appropriately-titled) track “Satisfied,” all of it done with a seemingly effortless sui generis panache and ardor-filled abandonment that finds any and all of those just-utilized referential watermarks self-erasing themselves in the face of the one-of-a-kind talent pouring from the grooves here which, y’know, is just what happens when you find yourself in the one, the only…Bobby’s Place.
[Get a piece of Bobby’s Place here – and be advised it appears like it’s two separate discs, which we’re pretty sure it is but the album entire is included in the price; and, here, one more bite of this delectable pop banquet, the above-mentioned title track no less. Enjoy…]
