There are many things that surprised me about “Pogboy”, so we’ll start with the most light-hearted first. It’s not named in homage to Paul Pogba.
This was a blow, seeing as I had a whole intro planned about how I saw his only game for Man U in his first spell (they beat my lot that night) but that I didn’t notice him, and how that if I couldn’t claim to have witnessed the birth of greatness that night, then I wasn’t making the same mistake here.
But this “Pogboy”, this young Frenchman, has named his album after his effects pedal. The second part of what I said, the bit about greatness, that’s staying as there’s a real talent here.
That is evident across these six tracks. But that leads to the second surprise, because I guess you shouldn’t judge an artist by his cover (or something). To look at Rabin, is to see a lad in his mid-20s dressed in a baseball cap and looking every inch like the latest indie star.
Listen to the intro to “Walk”.
You’ll be disavowed of that thought in about 35 seconds, because this boy, he can play.
The riff is mighty and blues flavoured, however – and this is surprise number three – for all the stylings of the sound, the fact that he was over here with Samantha Fish at the end of February, if this is “blues” than it is more from your Dan Patlansky end, that is to say the mellow lead of “Movin’ On” knows where its roots are, but it plays with the formula. There’s soul to this and the clever use of horns underline it.
He cites influences like Gary Clark Jr, and you can see it in stuff like “Say (You Won’t Leave Me)” – another that drenches itself in horns as much the guitar sound (and Engineer Ross Hogarth, who has worked with the likes of REM, makes this sound like a million dollars, and the whole thing has the sort of West Coast cool of something that was made in LA.
“Angels” finds a real primal guitar sound (I am no musician but the Pog gets a workout here), which is at odds with its sweet melody, but that’s nothing compared to surprise number four.
Rabin toured with Wishbone Ash last year, and it rubbed off on him with a genuinely brilliant proggy epic. “Death” is well over seven minutes long, and is a measure of the ambition of the artist, but also the skill.
He finishes this compelling half an hour with “Gone”, a slow building thing which cuts loose with a sax solo and some real guitar wizardry before it is through.
Felix Rabin is a name to watch. He will not fit in your neat boxes and this is not the complete package quite yet, but “Pogboy” proves that he has the talent to be anything that he wants to be.
Rating 8/10
