Saturday 13 December 2014

Richard Harrow - Richard Harrow (1981)



Sometimes the record bins at the local record stores yield unexpected treasures. Or, in this case, unknown treasures.

Gene was flipping through the bins at Hot Wax last month, and stopped partway through the H's when he saw today's featured LP (still in shrink wrap, even!). Clearly, we hadn't done all of our homework on Living Room Records guru Richard Harrow and didn't realize he had put out a bunch of records himself. 

This looks to be his third LP, despite being self-titled. It's a very pop affair - no KBD PUNK here - but still entertaining. There's a sly sort of humour behind the songs, like when he sings "it's a wonderful world/But sometimes it stinks." The humour is kind of candy-coated - but then it's hard to imagine that someone with a home studio who has made a career of recording would do anything lo-fi. And a quick look at his youtube channel shows that he's still working in the same vein.

2 comments:

Aubadicus said...

Got this a few years back & then began noticing how many records his name's on. He was basically the Lorrie Matheson of the 80s.

robin said...

I didn't know what to make of this record until a couple tracks passed. Was it serious? A parody? Now it's pretty clear that Harrow was Calgary's very own 10CC. Amazing!