Artist:     Harvey McLaughlin

Album:     Tabloid News

Label:     Saustex Records

Release Date:     2.16.2018

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BUY DIGITAL

BUY PHYSICAL

Listening to Harvey McLaughlin’s debut solo album in this present day and age of fake news and fakebooks, might transport some to down on the corner of Reality Road and Reality Ave on the south side of Storyville, where a boom box belts out a piano getting pounded to a pulp, or perhaps a swan dive into the black hole formerly known as Ralph’s Silvercloud Lounge, where Warren Zevon and Tom Waits once held court and Randy Newman was the bouncer.

Formerly a guitar player in grungy garage bands around his hometown of San Antonio, McLaughlin focuses mainly on his keyboards (piano and organ) here to rhythmically weave his fascination with nearly every sensational yarn from the likes of Amazing Tales, Weird, and Enquiring _ But Almost Lost Minds style publications into song. The devil’s in the details here, with song titles like “6 To 8 Weeks” that reference the wait time a hopeless romantic looks for his mailman to deliver his X-Ray specs or muscle building supplements ordered from the ads within. Other titles like “Bigfootsville,” “Must’ve Been Elvis,” “All’s Well In Roswell” give you an idea of the ground covered on all lucky 13 tracks, though “All’s Well” is an instrumental that gives your mind a break, and yet reminds you that Harvey’s still thinking tabloids, even when he’s only playing around.

As for his keyboard chops, he says “I want to play piano, the way Link Wray plays the guitar.” I would argue that his composing and production skills go one or two steps beyond “Rumble” and bear melodic shades of Sam Cooke’s “Bring It On Home To Me” and Van Morrison (ho also covered Cooke’s tune) at times, e.g., “The Devil In The Dance Hall” and “November 1st” tunes that sport welcome touches of a horn section. His piano style reminds me of Ernie Freeman, who was the original studio cat behind a succession of ivory ticklers known as B. Bumble & The Stingers (“Nut Rocker” and “Bumble Boogie”).

There is a whimsical and very welcome lyric booklet that I found helpful , because when you play about half of these cuts, at the volume they most likely were recorded at, Harvey’s lyrics get buried. I would reckon he spent more than a little time on them to want that. Surprisingly, when you lower the volume, they mystically reappear in the mix, but the patrons during “Last Call At The DIxie Pig” would probably mutiny if you did.

—Ken Spooner