Treat by name, treat by nature was too good an opportunity to miss, but there is definitely a saleable streak running through the music of Charlie Treat. THE COMET is one of those records that revisits popular music in its heyday with a host of tunes conforming to a sole aim of hitting a listening sweet spot. Of course music is a lot more fragmented in 2021 and artists like Charlie Treat have to pedal harder to find an audience, often tethered to a small team searching for that niche.
Throughout its forty minute playing time, this album rarely relents from a feel good mode, whilst creating a heady dose of extravagant roots pop. You will need to inject a little energy in keeping up with the twelve tracks projecting an artist rotating like a cat on a hot tin roof. Yet a buoyant sound works wonders giving proof that traditional instruments like harmonica, fiddle and brass can filter into a showtime experience ripe for the theatre environment.
There is no harm in an album getting off to a cracking start and 'Ain't Gonna Be The One' delivers perfectly for Treat, ensuring vibrant fiddle and brass in a lively uptempo number emerge as the ideal lift off. As the album manoeuvres through its content you get the retro soulful pop piece ('Two Best People'), the quintessential love song ('Tune as Pretty as You'), the groovy funky number ('Dollar for Dollar') and the catchy stomping epic ('Dancing at the Bar (The Quarantine Song)').
Outside the opener which ultimately proves a tough act to follow, the hot on the tails challenger falls to the infectious rock opera feel to 'Drive My Blues Away', which for me anchors the second half of this record. Maybe the album eventually falls short on a breakthrough track to lift it away from the niche, but that need not detract from this being a record to garner many fruitful listens from those drawn to its qualities.
Charlie Treat is a singer-songwriter from Nashville and the embodiment of a 'Music City' not restricted to genre, but the perfect home for scene hopping operators tapping into the general vibes of residing in creative communities. THE COMET is a made for measure tonic for those yearning for a slice of updated rock 'n' roll with a little jive thrown in. The sound is brash, bold and positive. It fizzes, shakes and lands a blow. Job done by the artist, over to an audience to be found, which in my book is forthcoming.
