Consumer Guide Album

The Morells: The Best Bar Band Ever! 'Live' in '84 [Almeron, 2009]
This Missouri quintet never much rocked the house, playing their "Rockabilly/Beach Music/Psychedelic Bubblegum" for fun rather than intensity--a looser kind of release that helps flat patches pass before you know it. And did they have a nose for a certain kind of unprepossessing good song. The Strangeloves' "Cara-Lin" and their own "Growin' a Beard," two of the six selections they hauled out for both of the shows these matched 79-minute discs document, each rely on a repetitive chorus of no great import that any sentient human will memorize involuntarily within two minutes. That leaves 37 songs played once, mostly covers you've never heard in your life--a life that will be just slightly happier after you get to know them. B+