26 years after it’s release, Bill Pritchard’s Three Months, Three Weeks & Two Days, remains one of my all time favorite albums. It arrived at my college radio station, WKSR (Kent State University), just as we were playing Morrissey’s Viva Hate into the ground. Pritchard struck the same nerve as Moz without all the drama. The buoyant melodies, wry lyrics, Parisian cafe touches and Pritchard’s crisp, deep woodwind of a voice helped end the Eighties on a high note as we faced a daunting Nineties without the Smiths. ‘Nineteen’ and ‘Tommy & Co.” were the big hits, but I absolutely fell in love with the single ‘Romance Sans Paroles’.
Considering this album was Pritchard’s 4th in two years, I fully expected to fill my shelves with his work in the decade to come. But the stretches between albums became greater and greater and I often found out about “new” Bill Pritchard albums years after their official release. Needless to say, I am glad to be ahead of the game with his upcoming album, Mother Town Hall — arriving hot on the heels of 2014’s A Trip To The Coast. Both discs are on one of my favorite labels, Tapete Records, home to A Projection (see my top discs of 2015), The Monochrome Set (their latest, Spaces Everywhere, was definitely in 2015’s top 50), The Lilac Time and Lloyd Cole.
In advance of the album’s February 26th release, POPDOSE proudly premieres the first single, Saturn and Co.:
The album was primarily recorded in Burslem, the Mother Town, with Tim Bradshaw, Mike Rhead, Liam Bradley and Remy LaPlage. Horns were added in France, and it was mixed in Burslem, Berlin and Singapore with Bradshaw’s longtime studio partner, Roo Pigott. While Burslem was the birthplace of the late, great Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister, the founder, bassist and lead singer of MotÁ¶rhead, and pop star supernova Robbie Williams, Pritchard’s charming music is more clearly suited to the town’s Victorian and Edwardian-era terraced houses and quaint streets. French influences abound as well (‘Mont St. Michel’, ‘Deja Vu Boutique’), while the characters in Pritchard’s songs wander the Earth, the including the ‘Vampire From New York’ who married a priest from Birmingham.
There’s still plenty of time to catch up on Pritchard’s best albums in advance of Mother Town Hall’s February 26th release. Here are few more classics to enjoy until then:
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