Better Looking
2005
Ozona
About This Album
Two years after Extended Play hit the British charts, England's Goldrush return with Ozona -- named for the small Texas town where the bandmembers stayed for a day or so while their van, which had broken down in the desert, was being repaired. It's a long haul from their hometown of Oxford, England, which is a cold, wet, dreadfully dreary place, while Ozona is hot, dry, small, and timeless in the only way an American sinkhole can be. The album is purportedly about their sojourn there and back. The band received production and mixing help from Dave Fridmann on a number of tracks, which were recorded in various locations in the U.S. and in the U.K. Goldrush haven't changed their sound significantly over the years, but there is less jangle and more volume this time out. Their blend of British shoegazer pop, ringing folk-rock sonics (reminiscent of the Byrds and Neil Young & Crazy Horse), and wonderfully constructed songs is for the most part their own. These guys seem to have come from the time in the 1990s when Catherine Wheel and Ride were kings, and they have taken that sound and pushed it to the edge and over, where it meets the ramshackle storytelling attitude of the Band, the bright but ever weary Roger McGuinn, the '70s country-pop of Eddie Rabbit, and the laid-back hedonism of the Burrito Brothers.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,4 and 7)

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