"no more needing you after school and no more reasons to break the rules..."
Listening to the somber yet truly effervescent sway of Sour Ops' "Now You're Gone" and I couldn't help but think of Nick Lowe. It could be the acoustic tones or Price Harrison's easy and tender vocal aesthetic bathed in a sweet melancholia or something beneath the surface that I can't quite define but there Sour Ops does have a kind of late 70's nucleic acid in their artistic make up. While the track feels truly wistful and has a beautiful pop, even chamber pop thrust trading horns for an exquisitely beautiful string arrangement, the track certainly is informed by darker, sadder subject matter than your average Lowe song.
Price shares:
"Inspired by the 1924 John Crow Ransom poem 'Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter,' 'Now You’re Gone' is an elegy about the untimely death of a young girl. The narrator is forced to face the present by these circumstances while being overwhelmed by ghosts of their shared history. “I wanted the music to be fairly minimal in terms of structure but then I decided to enlist Emery Dobyns (Nashville Songwriter and Producer) to do a string arrangement to add some emotional weight to the production.”
"Inspired by the 1924 John Crow Ransom poem 'Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter,' 'Now You’re Gone' is an elegy about the untimely death of a young girl. The narrator is forced to face the present by these circumstances while being overwhelmed by ghosts of their shared history. “I wanted the music to be fairly minimal in terms of structure but then I decided to enlist Emery Dobyns (Nashville Songwriter and Producer) to do a string arrangement to add some emotional weight to the production.”
This is my introduction to Sour Ops so I have a lot of poking around to do.
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
https://sourops.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/souropsband
https://www.instagram.com/sour_ops/
https://soundcloud.com/feralette
In the world of post-post modern Nashville, some of the best music being made in the city is all about a kind of creative synergy that combines country with pop, Americana with rock, and rock ‘n’ roll with virtually every kind of music. On their new, Nashville-recorded single, “I Want You Around,” Music City power pop band Sour Ops makes great music from the unparalleled opportunities the city offers to musicians who want to transcend genre.
Over the course of the last two years, Sour Ops — led by guitarist, songwriter and singer Price Harrison — has mined a rich lode of glammy power pop. Their flair for addictive guitar pop marks their 2018 album Family Circuit and 2019’s Tinder Flame, a superb EP. In addition, they’ve released a cool half-dozen singles in 2020. Each shows a different facet of the band, but the basis is the classic rock and punk of the 1970s and ‘80s. In the world of Sour Ops, Bowie and the Beatles spark off Marc Bolan riffs, and there’s a hint of the Memphis-style power pop of stalwarts like the Scruffs and, of course, Big Star.
On the aforementioned 2020 releases, Sour Ops perfect a winningly snide take on guitar pop, with drummer George Lilly and bassist Tony Frost powering Harrison’s concise, riff-heavy tunes with flair and rock ‘n’ roll panache. Meanwhile, “I Want You Around” finds the band in Americana-meets-glam mode, with celebrated Nashville pedal-steel master Paul Niehaus, whose many credits include stints with Nashville avant-rockers Lambchop and alt-country singer Jon Byrd, adding that touch of post-Gram Parsons, post-Pavement atmosphere (think the country-esque tunes on that group’s 1995 opus Wowee Zowee).
In addition, legendary Nebraska-born blues-R&B-rock vocalist Shaun Murphy adds evocative background vocals to “I Want You Around.” Murphy’s resume includes work with Meat Loaf, Little Feat (she was a full-time member of that legendary band), Eric Clapton, and Bob Seger, the latter of whom Murphy has accompanied on the road and in the studio since the 1970s.
“I Want You Around” shows the range of a great power-poppin’ rock band whose roots go back into the now-legendary days of early Nashville rock. Born in Alaska and raised in Murfreesboro, Tenn., near Nashville, Price Harrison was a student at Vanderbilt University in the early ‘80s, and early on he had taken up guitar alongside his brother, Mark Harrison. Both brothers were entranced by the sounds of the British Invasion and the Velvet Underground. After studying architecture at Yale in the mid-’80s, Price moved to New York to practice his profession, forming a fine band, the Botswanas, in the Big Apple.
In Nashville, early ‘80s, Price had played in a band called 69 Tribe, that featured future Sour Ops members Tony Frost and John Sheridan. 69 Tribe’s sound was a definite precursor to the Sour Ops style. Price is also a longtime member of brother Mark’s power pop band, Snakehips, which hews to the more Alex Chiltonian side of the genre on albums like 2015’s Left for Dead.
As befits a highly regarded architect who’s also a fine photographer and graphic designer, Price proves himself a master of riffs, and of songwriting, on Sour Ops tracks like the Family Circuit standout “All That I Want,” which crunches like Bolan jamming with AC/DC. On the same album, “Not Enough” recalls the Memphis power pop of the Scruffs. Still, what makes Sour Ops a bracing tonic for our troubled times is the rigorousness of the riffage, and the band doesn’t jangle as much as it rocks out.
Family Circuit and Tinder Flame move effortlessly through the Bowie-Bolan-Beatles universe. On the remarkable series of singles Sour Ops has released in 2020, the sound goes from Stonesy shuffle of “The Sexy Sadist” to the Oasis-style, Britpop leanings of “Contagious.” The country-rock of “I Want You Around” fits into the sound--these guys know how to goose style, turn the tropes to their own purposes.
Sour Ops keeps the synergy alive, but it’s all about the sound. Guitars, guitars, etc. And the songs. Sometimes building on the basics is, as they say, just a whole lot of fun.
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