Peralta “Time, Purpose & Gold” - Spanish Band’s Homage to West Coast Rock is one of the best albums of 2014

"Peralta...mi Banda española favorita." - Sid Griffin (The Long Ryders)

2014 has been a pretty good year for my kind of rock’n’roll. If you are into 1960s influenced acid-tinged jangling sunshine psychedelia this year has really brought forth a bumper crop.

Woods, Real Estate and The Ugly Beats have put out their best albums to date and we have heard superb sophomore albums from Quilt and the Allah-Las. Add to the above the excellent psych-folk debut albums from Cian Nugent and Ryley Walker and you can see it really has been an excellent year.

An album that I really should have picked up on sooner – it was released in April – is Peralta’s debut Time, Purpose & Gold. I saw the band support the Ugly Beats in early December and was really impressed - so much so I decided to check out their debut album. I’ve been listening to it non-stop for the last two weeks and, for my money, it is worthy of being placed alongside the above mentioned albums as one of the best of a very good year.

Peralta are a band from Gijon in the north of Spain. Individually, they have been around for a few years playing in different bands on the local and international scene. Angel Kaplan played with the most recent incarnation of the Cynics and has also put out some high quality self-composed solo material which is also worth checking out.

Gijon has a thriving local band scene - originally known as the “Xixon (or Gijon) Sound” in its heyday in the 90s (see here for more on the Xixon Sound) - over the years the town has given us the pure pop of Australian Blonde, the experimental post rock of Manta Ray, the folk-pop of Pauline en la Playa and the garage punk of Dr Explosion. Solo artist Francisco Nixon has shown an extra-ordinary talent for writing wonderful 60s inspired catchy pop songs and the very successful folk troubadour Nacho Vegas has turned himself into a kind of Spanish version of Leonard Cohen and/or Bob Dylan.

Peralta are veterans of this scene and recorded an EP in 2012 which included an excellent version of Buffy Saint-Marie’s Indian Cowgirl In The Rodeo but this year’s Time, Purpose & Gold is their first full length album together.

It is an extremely impressive debut - for my money one of 2014’s best albums. It’s full of well-crafted, self-composed songs that are not only very catchy but bring to mind the early 70s glory days of Clarence White era Byrds, The Flying Burrito Bros, CSNY, Neil Young and even the Eagles as well as harder rocking Brit outfits like The Who (on You're Going Too Far) and The Faces (on Waiting For The Past).

As well as composing the material themselves the band also prove themselves to be expert players. They can really get into a groove. Pablo Gonzalez’s drums are outstanding throughout – especially on You’re Going Too Far – his urgent and exhilarating Keith Moon style fills and splashes really propel the song.

Guitarists Ángel Kaplan and Marcos Montoto are superb instrumentalists. Check out the guitars on Lock You In My Dreams. Great riff and a helluva solo.

The album is impressively consistent but also quite varied. Behind The Fence recalls the brilliant and sadly missed blues and bluegrass picking style of Clarence White whereas People Inside Of Me is anthemic hard rock and is reminiscent of The Who circa Quadrophenia

All in all, Time, Purpose & Gold is a superb collection of West Coast influenced rock. The vocals may occasionally lack confidence - understandable if one remembers English is not their native language - however the band show an unerring knack for clever and catchy song-writing and make inventive and memorable rock’n’roll. These are tunes that really stick in your head.

This album brings to mind some of the things I hold dearest - The Byrds, David Crosby,  Neil Young, The Grateful Dead, The Who, The Faces and 60s Garage Rock. It freely drinks from the same well of Cosmic Amerikana and 70s rock but, much like The Woods, Beachwood Sparks and The Sadies, Peralta attempt add something new to the mix and, in so doing, they are worthy followers of that pioneering tradition.

Stunning West Coast Rock brought to you from the north coast of Spain. It’s already on my list of summer 2015 beach listening.

If you too love all of the above click this link and listen to the album in its entirety. You won’t be disappointed http://folcrecords.bandcamp.com/album/folc030-peralta-time-purpose-gold-lp

Peralta are:

Marcos Montoto (guitar and vocals)

Angel Kaplan (guitar and vocals)

Pablo Gonzalez (drums and vocals)

Juancho Lopez (bass)

Bonus
Peralta and The Ugly Beats in Gijon doing a wonderful version of the Flamin' Groovies' I Can't Hide.

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20 years of the Xixon Sound

"All Kinds Of You" - Ryley Walker's debut continues the folk tradition of Bert Jansch, Davy Graham and Tim Buckley 

"Born With the Caul" - Cian Nugent and the Cosmos  

Horizonte Eléctrico - 10 Great contemporary Spanish bands...

The Tarnished Gold - Beachwood Sparks

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Yé-yé! Spanish Nuggets - Ten 1960s Garage, Beat and Psych classics from Spain. 

The Ugly Beats and Peralta live in Gijon 11/12/2014 - Sublime Nineteen-Sixty-Sixicity

Anyone who has taken even a slight shufti at this blog will have garnered (correctly) the impression that I hold the year 1966 AD in quite some high regard.

For me, it was the musical peak year of the 60s - the year with all the potential and none of the hang-ups. It was the year with all the promise, the energy and the momentum but with none of the excess that was to bedevil the end of the decade and the most of the 70s. 1966 is the year when, as Hunter Thompson wrote in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, “You can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

And what a musical high water mark it was. The Beatles made Revolver, The Byrds put out Eight Miles High, Dylan released Blonde on Blonde and in San Francisco bands like the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Big brother were coalescing into the next new wave. 1966 felt like the year when it was all about to happen.

If you could return in time you’d set the clock for the spring of 66 wouldn’t you?

I would anyway. Summer in Swinging London, to see England win the World Cup, and then off to spend the rest of the year on Haight Street SF and seeing everyone at the Fillmore and Avalon ballrooms.

Time travel is, for the moment anyway, impossible – or at least difficult to arrange -  but we do have some splendid bands to recreate some of the ambiance of that golden iridescent year – one of whom are the Ugly Beats from Austin, Texas.

The Ugly Beats at Sala Acapulco, Gijon.

Their new album “Brand New Day” is a sublime mix of 1966 inspired Garage Rock and Pop – their best yet actually – and judging by the gig I saw at the casino in Gijon on Thursday night, they are a live band to be reckoned with.

They played a varied mix of excellent original material from all of their four albums along with some superb covers. Their version of The Rascals' Find Somebody is way better than the original and the two tracks from the Ramones first album - Cretin Hop and Today Your Love - went down a storm and fitted in perfectly with the band’s hi-energy garage punk ramalama ethos. They even did a spectacular cover of obscure Spanish band Los Nivrams' Sombras.

If there was a negative, it might be that there was a little too much chat from the stage at times. It slowed the pace and deadened audience enthusiasm - it might be an idea for some visiting US and UK  bands to remember that, in places like Gijon, not everyone understands English perfectly and some comments from the stage sailed wonderfully over the audience’s head to fall, inevitably, quite flat.

Support band Peralta (a kind of Gijon super group made up of some ex components of well known local bands like Dr Explosion and The Cynics) also put in an impressive set and are definitely a band to keep an eye on. The two bands teamed up for a couple of numbers and Peralta’s set encore of the Flamin Groovies I Can't Hide (with Ugly Beats Joe Emery and Jeanine Attaway joining them on stage) was one of the night’s highlights.

An excellent night. What a pity so few turned up to see them. But then if local promoters don’t advertise how is anyone going to know? Time and time again I have seen poorly attended gigs in Gijon with no promotion or advertising. There wasn’t even a poster of the show outside the main door of the venue fer Chrisake...

Anyway, the Ugly Beats. Sublime shimmering Nineteen-Sixty-Sixicity. 

It’s A Brand New Day. 

It is.

Go see ‘em and buy the album.

Here's a video selection of the night's highlights from Youtube.

Ugly Beats Joe Emery and Jeanine Attaway joined support band Peralta for their encore. A stunning cover of the Flamin Groovies I Can't Hide.

The Band's own Up On The Sun and Brand New Day.

A cover of the Rascals Find somebody.

A cover of Sombras by Spanish band Los Nivram (whose name is a tribute to the Shadows Hank Marvin - Nivram is Marvin backwards).

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Ten 21st Century Summer Psychedelic Nuggets

20 years of the Xixon Sound

Los Brincos - Glorious 60s Garage Beat Psych Pop...

New Year's Eve 1968 "Surprise Partie" with The Who, Small Faces, Booker T, Pink Floyd, Joe Cocker, Fleetwood Mac... Dawn of the Rock Revolution 

Yé-yé! Spanish Nuggets - Ten 1960s Grarage, Beat and Psych classics from Spain.