About 4 years ago I was watching a cable music show that this particularly evening featured quite a bill Wilco, Flaming Lips and the show ended with a young lad I'd never heard of whose band went by the name Owsley. The next day I sought out some Owsley and eventually had to order it. Owlsley played a brand of Beatlesque, Brit-pop-ish stuff, that also reminded of me of a Canadian band from the early 90s some you may remember called Jelly Fish. Since that album I haven't heard a peep out of Owsley or for that matter similar solo-sters who debuted impressive albums, Jason Faulkner and that guy who went by the moniker of the New Radicals. What ever happened to those guys?

Which brings me to Steadman, a Brit-pop outfit whose members are actually Brits. Named after the band's prime-mover Simon Steadman, I first heard these guys on my Sirius satellite radio who were playing "Wave Goodbye" in pretty tight rotation. This particular song is one of the most shamelessly derivative song I've ever heard. The song sounded so much like Oasis that it was better than Oasis.

Revive is a consistently strong album that suffers from a few problems, Simon isn't the most articulate lyricist, (they're not awful, but if his words were as poetic as his song-crafting and interesting twists on bridges and chorus segues, these guys would definitely make my year end best-of list. Simon could also stand to introduce a little more diversity into his writing, (you find yourself playing the "what Beatles song does this sound the most like" game).

By the same token Paul McCartney has been an outspoken champion of this band, and the cover of the album sports a very flattering blurb that Paul wrote in praise of the band. If this sounds like your cup o' tea, I'd recommend you try it out. Pretty decent collection of accessible melodic 3 minute ditties. Here's hoping they don't wind up in the $1.99 bin with Owsley. Incidently if you do see a self-titled album from Owsley grab it, chances are it will be reasonably priced.