Why It Matters

Before we get into this album, a quick UK English lesson for American readers: A rhyne (pronounced “reen”) is, according to Wikipedia, “a drainage ditch…used to turn areas of wetland close to sea level into useful pasture.”

While we may not know the word we’re certainly familiar with the concept, at least metaphorically. Here in the U.S. (and, I suspect, the rest of the world) popular music has reverted to a proverbial wetland as bland and featureless as the period just prior to the Beach Boys and the Beatles, when artists like Pat Boone and Neil Sedaka swapped chart slots with Billy Vaughn and his Orchestra.

Yes, and while Brian Wilson and the Fabs restored popular music to useful pasture, the bevy of less talented ’60s surf and British Invasion bands that followed in their wake turned the radio dial back into a muddy swamp which was subsequently drained again later in that same decade by psychedelic bands like The Byrds, with their bright, jangly semi-acoustic guitars and harmonicas.

That same cycle repeated every few years until the rise of the machines–Auto-Tune, AI, songs generated by algorithms to maximize clicks generated by algorithms. It seems the only humans reflected in pop music anymore are the endless string of bros lined up to break Tay-Tay’s heart. Even the way we listen is digitized now, the presumably unexpected result being the return of singles as the dominant music format while albums with their carefully considered track listings are as passe as tambourines and Hammond organs.

Enter The Rhynes–the band, not the ditch–essentially a one-man affair out of Somerset in South West England. That one man is Joe Atkinson, keyboardist for Flipron and Neville Staple (the Specials, Fun Boy Three), who wrote, sang, and played most of the instruments on Everything the Wrong Way Round. The exceptions? Behind the drum kit sits The Neville Staple Band’s Matty Bane, and Stanley Atkinson provides additional guitar on a couple of tracks.

Album opener “I Can’t Hear You” lays out the thesis statement for the record in the song’s chorus: “And the world needs turning down / Cuz it gets so bloody loud / I can’t hear you.” This is exactly what Atkinson does over the next ten songs: turns down the digital noise so that we can hear the analog beauty of real instruments, human voice, human emotion. One might reach for a Byrds comparison here, but to my ear “I Can’t Hear You” and its nine companion songs have more in common with the psychedelic revival of the early 1980s–Paisley Underground bands like Rain Parade and Dream Syndicate, or IRS-era REM, for example.

Summer factors heavily into this collection of songs, never more prominently than in “When the Summer Comes.” The track offers nods to both the Beach Boys’ “Ooh-ee-oohs” and the Beatles’ “Ooh la la las.” Harmonica and shakers/maracas join Atkinson’s bright semi-acoustic guitar and Bane’s steady boom-bap-boom-boom-bap drum beats for a song that evokes not just long forgotten adolescent summers but the tunes that accompanied them.

Track three’s “Time On Our Hands” is built on the sort of doo-wop era piano riff that once accompanied slow dances at junior proms. “Does anybody know what’s supposed to happen at the end of the day?” The song’s speaker asks in the bridge. “Is there anything that I can do to stop you just from running away?” It’s a beautiful, melancholy sentiment wrapped in deceptively happy musical wrapping.

“You Don’t Have to be Alone Anymore” may be the most psych-influenced song on Everything, at least musically. Lyrically the track bears no traces of incense, peppermints, or fields filled with strawberries. Rather, it concerns itself with healing and reassurance: “The sun it will arise / The clouds will leave your skies / The tears won’t fill your eyes anymore,” Atkinson sings. “I need you to know you don’t have to be alone anymore.” What a wonderfully human sentiment.

“Turning Around” marks the album’s midpoint. Shades of Phil Spector produced girl groups color Bane’s prominent drum figure here, the dramatic “Boom. Boom boom BAP” so prominently featured in songs by the Ronettes and the Shirelles. But true to the album’s overall tone, “Turning Around” doesn’t traffic in minor key moodiness. There’s heartache in this track, sure, but the clouds are lifting.

“Jennifers & Anyways” might be Everything’s biggest earworm, not to mention the album track bearing the coolest title. Atkinson shoves twice as many syllables into a few measures than should fit, which works perfectly and gives one’s inner voice something to chew on for hours–heck, days–after the record has stopped spinning.

Piano and harmonica return for track number eight, “Cracks.” The song is built around a straightforward guitar riff, the piano melody seemingly no more than two busy right fingers, the harmonica readily accessible to a beginner on that particular instrument. This is praise, not criticism, and in fact applies to the entire album. What makes Atkinson’s songs so engaging is their accessibility. One feels like he or she could play or sing along with these tracks, no advanced degrees in studio trickery or guitar shredditude required. One hears the hands of the makers–the author and performers–in every measure.

Title track “Everything the Wrong Way Round” would fit well on The Beatles’ Rubber Soul or REM’s Reckoning–two albums that may have never been mentioned in the same sentence before, but that’s the beauty of musical influence versus musical mimicry. There’s nothing wrong with a band like Greta Van Fleet aping Led Zeppelin, for example, but The Rhynes remind us that it’s exponentially more interesting to throw one’s influences into the proverbial blender and mix up something that is brand new yet somehow familiar.

“Don’t Make It Right” closes out the album, a song built on an almost gospel piano figure. That’s fitting, as the song feels a bit like a prayer for understanding in a world that has all but given up on the concept. “I can’t believe the shit that people say / I close my eyes but it won’t go away,” the song’s speaker declares, and later: “I need you to step inside my shoes / And tell me what it is I’ve got to lose.” If Atkinson wasn’t overtly referencing the polarized universe of social media bickering, he at least was channeling it. “I don’t feel like talking / I just want to feel all right / Even though I know you’re wrong don’t make it right.”

Everything the Wrong Way Round deserves a spot in your record collection, as does pretty much everything released on England’s Tiny Dog Records. These are people who care about music made by people for people, which unfortunately is becoming an increasingly rare commodity.

Pick up a copy of Everything the Wrong Way Round and explore other Tiny Dog releases on their website.