Ahh I knew schoolboy Latin would serve me well before too long! In Vino Veritas – ‘In wine is truth’, or rather less literally I guess “those who have had a few glasses tend to tell the truth”. Enough though of linguistic acrobatics!
After 39 solo albums and a plethora of live albums, demos and collections as well as a swathe of releases with The Dog’s D’Amour you could level the accusation at Tyla of being rather prolific. His latest release though comes not under the name of Tyla J Pallas which he first adopted for ‘Quinquaginta’ in 2011, but rather under the moniker ‘Tyla’s Dogs D’Amour’ which as fans will know is essentially the re-branded ‘The Tyla J. Pallas Band.’ The original line-up of The Dogs D’Amour had of course got back together briefly in 2012-13 to plat a few dates but sadly no new music ever eventuated under that name.
2018 saw the first releases under ‘Tyla’s Dogs D’Amour’ : first the ‘Homesick Angel EP’, and then a live record cunningly titled ‘Live’ Now we have the first full length studio outing ‘In Vino Veritas’ which if you signed up to the Pledge Music campaign came with a digital copy of a covers album ‘In Musica Veritas’ (which we will review separately).
Opening with ‘111’ things are immediately decidedly rocky, it’s a nice spiky guitar with a cool twist and grind that I must say does rather echo the vintage Dogs sound but rather fresher and with a dash more urgency and pungency. It’s certainly not a song that sounds out of place on a Dogs album but might be rather unexpected if it turned up on a Tyla J Pallas release.
‘Black Confetti’ the single of course will be familiar to fans and it’s just one of those timeless ditties that Tyla seems to be able to pluck off effortlessly that reek of vintage Dogs with the opening echoing maybe something off ‘Graveyard…’ and the sax that seamlessly slips into the intro ably recalling those even older days when the bootleg album was all we had. It’s got the glorious sheen of a ‘How Come it Never Rains’ with a few more miles under the belt and lashings of pathos and raw nerves. It’s so cool you’ll be belting this one out all year.
And with those opening salvos you’re led into the heart of an alum that has plenty of colour, plenty of memories, lashings of good times and everything from slick and fast rockers like ‘Bloodline’ which picks up the pace and rides it home hard and fast to tracks like ‘Bottle of Red’ which appropriately starts with the popping of a cork, a gentle sway and some cool sax to deliver a truly memorable ‘very Dogs’ mid-tempo sing along any old school fans will resonate with.
The sound effects keep on coming with a typewriter, siren and machine gun opening ‘Chicago Typewriter’ before the bluesy wail kicks in, whilst ‘Empire’ comes across like a huge take on the sixties wall of sound given a rock and roll edge: it’s catchy as hell. By way of contrast ‘Everything to Me’ slows things down again, a simple gentle ballad guided by a a gently swelling keyboard, the only song here that perhaps sounds a little unresolved. And with the smooth comes the deep dark ‘Fuck off Devil’ all awash with harmonica, slide and spite; the perfect lead into ‘I don’t Love Anyone’ the best of the slower numbers here, and an absolute diamond of a song. This is the kind of song that lifts an album from a great album to a ‘must have’.
The killer punch after that ditty comes with the title track ‘In Vino Veritas’ a wonderfully orchestrated construction haunted by sax and echoes of the past, it’s laid out beautifully before ‘Monster’ sidles in on the back of a strutting bluesy riff and bursts and splutters. The final word though goes to ‘Movie Star’ that sees Tyla do what he does perhaps best of all, look back days gone by, but here without the usual melancholy, the mood here is more of celebration. It’s a greta way to close what is a damned fine album that sees Tyla slip effortlessly into his Dog’s persona.
For a man who is such a prolific writer this might just be my favourite album to bear the ‘Dogs D’Amour’ moniker since the glory days of the 90’s…
