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An ultra-cool blend of retro/power pop and indie-cred, 'My Majesty' sees Sean Tillmann set his twisted lyrics to a set of infectious, irresistible toe-tappers. Opening with a dose of poetic justice, Double Date details a lonely cab ride home after being ditched at the end of said date, until the cabbie tells our hero that on his last visit "I picked up some drunken wrecks who needed a one-day test to check if they got burned by backstage sex." "Who was that girl backstage?" asks Tillmann, "Is it the one who just denied me? God I hope so." Like much of 'My Majesty' such bitter lyrics are sung with relish to a memorably melodic backing, exemplified by second track Give Me A B-Side's ecstatic declaration "I'm in a coffin / I'm in a cave / Right now I'm in the coldest place," or the nightmarish vision of The Human Raft - "A falling body tangled around a weather vein / A mass of flesh and blood and hair barely breathing... I took a chop and opened his spine / and everybody snorted a line of the last essence he left behind / Everybody went blind." In a voice that recalls Matthew Sweet on the likes of Big Trouble and is a dead-ringer for Ken Stringfellow on Grew Into My Body, Tillmann dips into '60s psychedelia on the almost Prince-like F You A-Bomb, puts a Hendrix/Cream twist on the hard-rock Surrender Foreign Lizzy, and does the Beach Boys thing with ease on Third Life and the harmlessly sexist closer I Need A Girl ("I need a family girl who listens to me / to mould my commitment issues like silly putty into monogamy / I need an older woman who's at her peak / to ease the pressure of the task that stands before me / Have a smoke and leave / I need a girl who's all these things to some degree / Or I will never be truly happy"). Knowingly wacky, original and familiar.

Matt Dornan
August 2002

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