THE VOLEBEATS

The Volebeats

[Rainbow Quartz]

The Volebeats have been putting records out sporadically and without much fanfare since 1989 without attracting a great deal of attention. The band has displayed an unwavering adherence to a ’60s British Invasion sound, particularly in its R&B permutations (the Stones’ Out of Our Heads would be an appropriate touchstone), strained through a country sensibility and throwing in various dollops of other influences—some Velvet Underground here, some folksy Byrds there—along the way. Not surprisingly, their latest (and first in five years) is a series of oscillations between those two poles, sometimes leaning more to the ’60s (“1000 Miles of Confusion”) sometimes more to the twang (“Walk There”), but always somehow incorporating both. With 19 songs stretching over 67 minutes, a certain cumulative sameness is inescapable. Still, there’s also something to be said for the singular devotion behind these multiple refractions of the same basic premise. –SM