Two years on from Tommy Tokyo & Starving For My Gravy’s excellent sophomore effort ‘Smear Your Smiles Back On’, the quartet – fronted in every way by Tommy Lorange Ottosen – released this third album in their native Norway in September. Recorded in just three weeks in a small studio in Wales with English producer Head (Pj Harvey, Thom Yorke, Massive Attack etc) behind the mixer ‘Go Time, Showtime & Absolute War’ moves in the same theatrical, psychedelic neo-folk vein as its predecessor, only slightly – and pleasingly – darker in sound and feel.

Lyrically Tommy Tokyo is still not the happiest camper around, exposing a tormented self in personal accounts of an uneasy mind like ‘Oxford Blue’ and first single ‘Final Straw’ as well as hitting out at others. Album opener ‘What A Deal Emile’ is an attack on hypocritical (TV-)preachers exploiting people’s need to believe to make money, ‘Black Holes (Instead Of Eyes)’ I’m pretty sure is a song about Syd Barrett and an acidic remark on how the rest of Pink Floyd treated him as he fell, while ‘I Have Never (Sucked On An English Tit)’ – although the press release lets us know that the collaboration with Head was a perfect match – reads like a big, heartfelt “fuck you” to the producer.

As on Tommy Tokyo & Starving For My Gravy’s previous effort frontman Tommy’s dramatic vocal – in more tender moments like the beautiful closer ‘Eyes & Faces’ tracing Neil Young – is a bright shining highlight of ‘Go Time, Showtime & Absolute War’. Which simply is a great album continuously unfolding and revealing new details with each dedicated listen.

Genre: Alternative/Neo-folk
Who: Tommy Tokyo & Starving For My Gravy
Album: Go Time, Showtime & Absolute War
Label: Warner Music
Year: 2010
Country: Norway
Language: English
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Recommended tracks:
What A Deal Emile – Black Holes (Instead Of Eyes) – The Final Straw – Thank God For That – Eyes & Faces