Hearty Har

★★★ Radio Astro BMG RIGHTS MANAGEMENT. CD/DL

John Fogerty’s offspring deliver psychedelically inclined debut.

Hearty Har’s linchpins, Shane and Tyler Fogerty, are the sons of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s mainman John. Their first album’s lead-off track, Radio Man ’56, celebrates a creature with “green eyes and yellow hands”, fusing B-movie horror imagery with a hint of CCR in their scuzzy Cosmo’s Factory pomp. However, the rest of Radio Astro mostly shuns slavish imitation. Instead, it’s a saucereyed journey through the musical version of Alice’s Wonderland, with far-ranging influences. Scream And Shout! stirs some Stax-style soul into the mix; One For The Other offers fuzzy, Nuggets-esque powerpop, while instrumental Canyon Of The Banshee suggests a mariachi band stumbling out of the desert after a peyote trip. There are times when the self-consciously wacky psychedelic tropes grate, but on most of these 10 tracks the Fogerty boys’ songwriting gifts shine through.