Andrew Weiss and Friends - the world’s smallest violin. (2024) Hi-Res

Back to the seventies with this thoughtful and well-written lively soft-rock. This is Andrew Weiss’ sixth album with his “Friends” and it’s a record that takes you back to the seventies with its jaunty, often piano-based, melodic soft rock. You might call it pop but it is less throwaway than that. It brings thoughts of Randy Newman, Elton John and even ELO for a short moment in one of the songs. Weiss is a great fan of the Beatles, treasuring a recent conversation with Paul McCartney, and you can hear echoes of their music here in the melodies too.

Weiss started writing songs at age 7 and played in various bands. He wrote three solo pop-rock albums in his bedroom as High Endeavour and continued this project at New York University where he met some bandmates and recorded four more albums. This band folded and Weiss created his current group with a new circle of musician friends. They recorded their first album “The Honeymoon Suite” in 2018.

Weiss studied Music Theory and Composition at NYU, spending some time writing film scores and this is no surprise when you listen to the rich and complex sounds here with different instruments arranged perfectly. He is very talented, playing acoustic and electric guitar, piano, mellotron, drums and bass in addition to providing very listenable sweet vocals. Twelve friends in all played on the record but key contributors were Scott Hirsch, Pete Donnelly and Daniel Wright who all contributed to the production as well as playing, with Donnelly and Hirsch mixing as well. Hirsch, a founder of Hiss Golden Messenger, was Weiss’ professor at NYC and contributed to writing some of the tracks, as did Wright.

Many tracks have piano at the fore but some like ‘Sympathy For the Sloop Kid’ and the catchy ‘Billy’ are rockier with the latter having nice slide guitar. ‘The World Has Moved On Without Me’ is country, with honky-tonk piano and lap steel guitar, which is also heard on ‘Jerico’. A wide range of instruments are used very effectively to make the music more interesting- a synth here, a violin there. Weiss’ ability means there are lots of good melodies and strong hooks throughout.

Weiss’ melodic music and sweet singing are slightly incongruous with his serious words. His voice would be better suited to singing about girls, cars and beaches but it makes the record more interesting that he doesn’t. His lyrics are rather cryptic, so it is not always easy to discern their meaning. He writes reflective and sensitively, mainly about relationships, with the word “love” often appearing. Some are failing or have failed although Weiss was married at the time of writing and his wife provides backing vocals on one of the tracks. There are mentions of loneliness with lines like “I’m so used to being alone”. On ‘Billy’ he wants to get in touch with a struggling friend: “I know that you feel lonely, but Billy you’re not the only one”. At other times you get the sense of Weiss being an almost hippie idealist with lines such as “And we believe in love, and we believe in light” on ‘We’re Trying to Have a Society Here!’

The combination of beautifully written music and thoughtful words makes this a strong album.