The Cairo Gang

Untouchable GOD?. CD/DL/LP/MC

Emmett Kelly’s ageless love letter to ’60s/early-’70s pop quality.

Emmett Kelly has been a key sideman for Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and latterly Ty Segall (co-producer here), during notably fertile periods for each boss. Already thus established as a premierleague harmony singer and arranger, his own band’s a class act to boot, spiriting up the on-the-fly compositional magic you hear in all the great cuts from rock’s golden era. Broken Record opens with the neolithic wallop of a Troggs riff, yet dressed in the sonic finery of The Byrds in ’65 – as brilliant-sounding a start to an album as any in 2017, and it doesn’t disappoint thereafter. That’s When It’s Over bridges between bozo glam riffage à la Lou Reed’s Vicious, and breathtaking twin-guitar tussling evocative of Jimi Hendrix or Television. Shades elsewhere of Big Star (What Can You Do?) and T.Rex (title track), yet as with its celebrated predecessor Goes Missing, Untouchable’s never about empty replication: it’s soulful, spiritually questing – pretty much irresistible, too.