Albert Hammond, Jr.
Yours to Keep (New Line/Scratchie)
By Emily Becker
Published: April 2nd, 2007 | 12:12pm
When Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond, Jr. took a sabbatical to release Yours to Keep first as a UK-only release in October 2006, followed by a March 2007 US reissue, expectations may have been artificially low given his full-time band’s lackluster recent output. The only urgency in Room on Fire was to cash in on the Strokes successful debut. While their third record First Impressions of Earth emptied pocketbooks, but failed to impress listeners. But surprisingly Yours to Keep may appeal to fans of the Strokes debut, although both records differ somewhat in scope; Yours to Keep is lighter than Is This It, but both are genuine in their desire to entertain. If the Strokes have come to be marked, deservedly or not, as bloated, excessive, even parodic then Yours to Keep is none of those things. Just because Hammond escapes the trappings that ensnared his band doesn’t mean that his own record should automatically leap to the top of the heap, but it helps. Expectations keep the playing field anything but level and maybe nobody knows this better than the Strokes.
On tracks like “In Transit” and “Back to the 101,” Strokes-like guitar work shows up like a familiar landmark, but mostly Hammond maps out poppier territory with the exception of “Postal Blowfish,” a US reissue bonus track, which is the album’s only real rocker. He draws from a broader palette than we have come to expect from the Strokes, and though the music is sweet, and much more interesting than the last two Strokes records, at times it sometimes still falls just a little flat, as on “Holiday” when he sounds like he’s copping lyrics from a generic travel commercial: “Jamaica ooh I’m gonna take ya away.” He visits some other familiar territory as well: “Back to the 101” skips across ‘70s AM rock; “Call an Ambulance” has a late-'60s pop feel; “Scared” is tight and catchy, with a debt to Weezer. All of these songs are pleasant enough, and you will be singing them in the shower, but they also slip a little too easily into the background.
With it’s poppier feel, it’s not shocking that Ben Kweller and Jody Porter (Fountains of Wayne) make guest appearances on Yours to Keep, as does the Strokes lead singer Julian Casablancas. The record finishes with “Well All Right,” a rendition of the Buddy Holly classic; Hammond’s off-the-cuff version is not slavish to the original yet it maintains something gentle, almost tender, without being cloying. That’s the real surprise here, not that Hammond blows the listener away by reinventing the rolling stone, but by how deftly he uses the light touch.
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