Jamie Hoover - vocals and guitar
Steve Stoeckel - vocals and bass
Rob Thorne - drums
Pat Walters - vocals and guitar
The Spongetones
"Number 9" (Loaded Goat Records)
The Spongetones are known regionally for re-creating the live energy and [+]Jamie Hoover - vocals and guitar
Steve Stoeckel - vocals and bass
Rob Thorne - drums
Pat Walters - vocals and guitar
The Spongetones
"Number 9" (Loaded Goat Records)
The Spongetones are known regionally for re-creating the live energy and style of the Beatles, but they aren't a tribute act. While their original material is rich with Lennon/McCartney-inspired harmonies and other Fab flourishes, the 'Tones draw on decades of British and American popular music.
With Added touches of trippy psychedelia and new wave, the Charlotte quartet, which celebrated its 25th year together last fall, makes sunny pop rock in the spirit of acts ranging from the Byrds to Elvis Costello.
Tracks from "Cruel And Unusual Punishment" could have found a home on MTV's '90s-era alt-rock show "120 Minutes," when fellow Beatle fans Matthew Sweet and Material Issue rules the channel's late-night playlist.
Some listeners may prefer one style over another (the retro numbers verses the more contemporary tracks), but there are no throwaways here. (POP Box 29056, Charlotte, NC 28229-9056)--Courtney Devores--The Charlotte Observer
Review by Pure Pop's Alan Haber
Number 9
The SpongeTones
Loaded Goat (2005)
The last SpongeTones record, Odd Fellows, came out a little under four months before I took semi-retirement from my Pure Pop radio show and web site in 2000. The boys were kind enough to stop in to the radio studio on their way up to a concert they were playing that night with Richard X. Heyman; we recorded an hour's worth of live in the studio, acoustic versions of songs from the then-new album and favorite songs from the band's catalog, interspersed with a number of lively interview segments.
But that's not all. There's more! Drummer Rob Thorne played a special set of drums we jury-rigged for the occasion: a guitar case (closed), on which he lavished swaths of a pair of drummy brushes, and a cardboard box full of tape cassettes and cables he used as a kick drum. Jamie Hoover and Pat Walters played acoustic guitars and bassist Steve Stoeckel plucked his Hofner Beatle bass through a small amp. What a day that was; I'm still getting over it, five years later.
Not that any of that has anything whatsoever to do with the SpongeTones' new album, the wondrous, e
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