The Top Drawers

Out of Sight! (Independent)

On Out of Sight!, Vancouver’s unashamed retro-rocking veteran fashionistas the Top Drawers kick out their mod/fab jams with another enjoyable collection of melodically pulsing guitar-driven pop that threatens to rename Granville Street as Carnaby Street—and one can only hope. It’s as if singer-guitarists Eric Lefebvre and Scott Perry, singer-bassist Patrick Jacobson, and drummer Blair MacDonald stepped fully-fleshed (ascots, Cuban-heeled boots, and all) from some wondrous Alternate Dimension. Think of a place where it’s always Freakbeat ‘66 and everything good—musically or otherwise—happens on the European side of the Atlantic.

Scads of Ray Davies/Colin Blunstone influences are proudly worn on the Top Drawers' ruffled sleeves, as shown on tracks like “Sweetheart” and “Your First Time”. “Another Time, Another Place” feels like their blood-brother is Matthew Sweet, and there’s nothing less than Kaiserkeller Frenzy when “My Baby Loves to Rock & Roll” claps and stomps its way out of the speakers—all 1:44 of it!

True to old-school form, the tunes found on Out of Sight! are mostly short and snappy, which makes it even more of a shame that 650 CISL is sadly off the air. As if any dull-ass terrestrial FM outlet would have the smarts to airplay any of these should-be-chart-toppers. Make no mistake: this is no plastic pastiche of dusty antique airwave echoes.

The Top Drawers don’t care what new niche-subgenre is flickering around in the underground nether-realms, and have zero time for the omnipresent chemical digitization of modern mass-market pop music. Instead the band shows once again that the sound and the heart of the Second Wave British Invasion still sits on an eternally timeless pedestal. Even if those loving, playing, and writing said music were born years ( or decades) after the original practitioners fell dff the charts and - dare we say - Out of Sight(!). A bright rave-up kickoff for 2022 and beyond. Enjoy!

-Ferdy Belland