Hall & Reasons – Spaceship

As unearthing previously overlooked privately pressed LPs becomes increasingly en vogue, collectors often fall prey to something akin to “needle-drop” syndrome. It’s too often tempting to evaluate a new acquisition with a hasty, if not faulty ear. While this sometimes works unduly in a record’s favor (for example, see the inexplicable fawning over Boscoe by various funk fanatics on soulstrut.com), it is more common for an LP to be deemed worthless for lack of raw talent in face of obscurity. At least, that was my initial reaction upon hearing Hall & Reasons.

Hall & Reasons may not have been of the dime-a-dozen breed of musician… but they were probably closer than they were willing to admit. I’ll say upfront that this record is not a work of brilliance. It’s a mismatched collection of experiments, providing an audio diary of that one time when Hall & Reasons kind of jumped the gun. And by jumped the gun, I mean released an album. Mark Reasons summed it up best when he naively scrawled on the back (I’m assuming this copy was handed to a local radio DJ), “Maybe we can get some airplay!” An old friend of mine used to have a saying for things like this: “Dude, that’s so local.” Still, this local Portland, Oregon LP is not wholly without talent and has a surprising amount of charm.

The ablum begins with the ambitious “The Wind is My Highway,” where Hall crams mouthfuls of syllables relating to any distracted thought that pops into his head (be it about spaceships, The Beatles, kites on a string, or nuclear bombs and guitars) into a cheesy, guitar-solo driven jam. Thankfully, it’s not the best they have to offer. The second song, “Orbiting,” takes a sharp left turn towards the land of synthesizer noodlery over funky rock drums. It’s fairly entertaining, but they can still do better. Let’s skip ahead to the title track, “Spaceship.” Here, Hall & Reasons rock the hell out while expatiating on being “on a spaceship.” This proto-new-wave jam is the first (and possibly only) appropriate vehicle for their ingenuous style of singing. Two other highlights are the Beatles-inspired “Every Morning,” where the duo reveal their ability to write a genuinely catchy tune, and the psyche-tinged, folkish “It’s Only Love,” which was almost certainly also inspired by a long Beatles-listening session.