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Spin Doctors, Here Comes the Bride When you think of the Spin Doctors, there's that memory of the first album, the hard-edged bluesy guitar, the snapping drums, the "little miss, little miss" vocals. It was exciting, but most of the songs tended to sound the same. Well, after two years in the studio, Here Comes the Bride, the band's latest release, does the opposite. Listening to the CD is a lot like setting the radio to scan. Songs change styles faster than pit crews change tires on the NASCAR circuit. There's a Latin influence, a bit of pop, heavy metal, rap, funk, jazz, even a dash of folk. I mentioned the variety to a friend, and she said, "oh, like potpourri," and personally, I'm not sure if it smells good or stinks. A lot of the time, it depends on the mood you're in, and whether or not you have the patience for the diversity.For the past two years, drummer Aaron Comess and singer Chris Barron have been experimenting with sounds and laying down tracks in the drummer's Manhattan home studio. Original band members are gone (according to some sources bassist Mark White left because the band never played out, and guitarist Eric Schenkman is now with Cork – see below), new members have trickled in (Ivan Neville on keys – of Neville Brother fame, and Eran Tabib on guitar), and the result is a rather uneven disk. Almost as if they had too much time to work on it. Hmmm, say about two years? The songs that work best are the ones that are relatively straight ahead. "The Bigger I Laugh, the Harder I Cry," seems the least over-produced, harking back to the roots of new wave pop, with simple guitar runs and hooks. "Diamond," a folky upbeat rocker, starts out with enough jangly guitar strumming to satisfy any college bound hipster, and rushes into a heavy Queen-like chorus. Yet songs like "Vampires in the Sun," which starts out with a salsa beat and then plunges into heavy metal territory with slashing guitar chords, or "Waiting for the Blow," a discordant, jazz fusion mess, will have you looking at your CD player in confusion and muttering thoughts like "what the hell is going on here?" And that, I suppose, is the question. What is going on here? My guess is too much time in the studio and not enough time playing in front of crowds. It's doubtful that a crowd would sit through an entire set of this, and a response like that would have clued the boys into what works and what doesn't.
That's not to say it's a bad disc; songs like "Midnight Rose," which begins with that trademark Spin Doctors guitar riff (and you know the one I'm talking about), had me tapping my foot, and recalling the glory days of British glam rock. And in the opening cut, "Hail Mary," you can hear echoes of all your favorite guitar gods from the early seventies. And don't worry – you won't hurt your head from thrashing it back and forth too much. Cuts like "In This World" slow the pace down enough, with Schenkman playing a twelve string National, and that's something you don't get every day. On "Bone Daddy," a Cajun influenced romp, Schenkman cuts loose on slide, sounding sloppy enough to be fun, while Laing's vocals cut across like a lecherous old man hunting for young girls.
There's not really a clunker on the disc, though neither is there a song that
grabs you by the collar and says play this over and over until the laser on
your CD burns out. On a minor note, closer inspection of the liner notes
shows that Redding only appears on four cuts, and on one of those he's just
clapping hands. Was this just a selling ploy? In today's marketplace,
probably. But that's not a bad thing, and hey, maybe he needed the money.
If you like seventies rock in the nineties, feel free to pick this disc up.
It features some fine drumming by Laing, nice guitar work from Schenkman, and
if you listen close enough laddy, you'll hear the magic bass of Redding.
July 1999 
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