By Alan Haber – Pure Pop Radio
It goes without saying, you might and probably do say, that the coming together of Andy Reed, Chris Richards and Keith Klingensmith as the Legal Matters was a couldn’t-be-denied fait accomplis. After all, the three musicians have been connected to each other, in one way or another, for a long time–in bands and various other musical pairings and on the level that counts most, friendship.
The groundswell of support and out-and-out love for the trio’s self-titled debut album, released in 2014, may have been surprising to some, but maybe not really to those of us who follow such things, who track the reception of albums carefully created by the best and brightest talents holding court in the world of melodic pop music.
The Legal Matters’ 2016 sophomore release, Conrad, garnered even more praise, which has led to a third long-player, Chapter Three, just released by Keith Klingensmith’s Futureman Records, an independent label that is dependent on an outpouring of love from lovers of melodic pop music, of which there are many.
Join Andy Reed, Chris Richards and Keith Klingensmith as they gather with me to talk about Chapter Three and what makes the Legal Matters tick on an all-new edition of Pure Pop Radio: In Conversation. Presented in See! Hear! Pop!, our finely-tuned, video-riffic sight and sound format, this is another of the can’t-miss kind of in-depth conversations we’re known for. The interview begins below.
After you’ve seen and heard the lively back-and-forth, click on any of the Bandcamp players presented below and listen to a few of the tracks from Chapter Three, all of which I predict you will love and which will propel you to purchase the album on vinyl, CD or as a download. Or vinyl, CD and as a download, because you can never have enough Legal Matters music in your life.
Enjoy.
Chapter Three by The Legal Matters
Chapter Three by The Legal Matters
Chapter Three by The Legal Matters
Where to Get It: The Legal Matters Store, Bandcamp, Amazon, Kool Kat Musik
Pure Pop Radio: In Conversation, hosted by Alan Haber, is the internet’s premier talk show presenting melodic pop music artists talking about their work. New episodes appear here exclusively on the Pure Pop Radio website. Podcast versions of previously-aired episodes are archived here.
Alan Haber’s Pure Pop Radio is the premier website covering the melodic pop scene with in-depth reviews of new and reissued recordings, and a wide variety of features.
If that weren’t enough, Timmy also wrote and produced a 20-track pop-rock opera–A Tale from the Other Side–writing, arranging, performing, engineering, producing and mixing it all on his own from the confines of his home studio (whew!). Longtime Pure Pop Radio observers will remember our yearlong coverage of Timmy’s 2015 Songs of the Week project; it’s fairly obvious that we like pretty much whatever this dude comes up with.
Brian Bringelson and Katy Pearson, married and musical, have long been Pure Pop Radio favorites. My love for Brian’s music goes way back to when he was writing and recording under the nom de plume Paul Starling; Brian’s current release, Desperate Days, a superb long player billed as by Brian and Gabe Dulek and released by Keith Klingensmith’s Futureman imprint, is delighting listeners from here to there and back again. Katy, who writes and records as Bearkat, or Miss Bearkat, to be more formal, is a multi-instrumentalist with a lovely voice and lovely songs.
As it happens, and as a wonderful respite full of delight, Andrew has corralled 30 quite gorgeous examples of Dropkick’s beauty from across the group’s catalog; that grouping, The Best of Dropkick, contained within a quite beautiful package designed and crafted by Alan Lennon, packs the purest punch on vinyl with an additional 20 examples of Dropkick’s musical art included on CDs, but any way you pick up the package increases the joy you will experience hearing Andrew and the band do their thing.
The Boys with the Perpetual Nervousness, the wonderfully-named band bringing together the considerable talents of Dropkick’s Andrew Taylor and El Palacio de Linares’s Gonzalo Marcos, has just released their second collection of virtually peerless harmony-infused melodic pop songs, Songs from Another Life, a title which seems to be as apt as apt can be during this continuing pandemic year.
I could easily see Dear Stella’s wondrous Time Zones EP, released late last year to much acclaim, rising to the top of the charts this year, or sailing there, if you prefer, because it really is that good. Time Zones’ six song playlist starts with “Time Machine,” a cheery burst of insanely creative, passionate force-of-good-naturedness recalling Jellyfish and other such there-are-no-limits-to-what-we-can-achieve-if-we-put-our-minds-to-it merry music makers, and ends with a quieter-by-many-yardsticks ballad, the very pretty “Brighton Beach” (not the one in Brooklyn, New York, and I made sure to ask).
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