Vigilantes Of Love – Summershine
Bill Mallonee has worn a number of musical hats in the Vigilantes Of Love over the past decade, from electric folkie to Christian guitar slinger to jangly roots-rocker. Mallonee’s success throughout his now extensive catalog has been his instinctual ability to incorporate the various sonic phases he’s gone through without discarding any of them along the way. That ability came through most clearly on last year’s stunning Audible Sigh, when Mallonee and VoL created a swirling homage to everything they’ve done and everything they love.
Mallonee had 40 songs written in the same vein when the band’s recent British touring awakened him to the deep-seated Britpop influences that had always lurked just under the surface of his songwriting. That inspiration led him to reject the stockpiled material; he subsequently wrote a batch of new songs in a furiously creative month, resulting in Summershine, VoL’s most exuberantly pop-fueled release to date.
The ringing pop Mallonee injects into Summershine, from the rousing opener “You Know That” to the Peppery “Galaxy” to the baroque psychedelic folk of “Along For The Ride”, owes a debt as much to second-generation influences such as XTC and Mitch Easter and Tommy Keene and R.E.M. as to first-generation divining rods the Beatles and the Kinks and the Who. In lesser hands, all this influence peddling could result in a flavorless clash of style, but true to his consistent vision, Mallonee has folded yet another influence into the Vigilantes of Love’s unique sonic niche.