PAT THOMAS - I Ain't Buying It LP

Cool Ghouls’ Pat Thomas ventures out solo for a second time, with a concise LP of tracks that pick at his personal indulgences outside of the breezy confines of his day gig with the Ghouls. Naturally there’s a general veneer of Cali-cool about the LP, but Thomas winds the album around a stylistic maze that sometimes meshes and sometimes clashes. There’s a prevalent thread of ‘70s AOR that pops up throughout the record, dipping his toes in the sharkskin slick pop of Steely Dan and tangling his tongue around the kind of pop nonsequitors that would make Joe Walsh check his hydration levels and belly back to the bar. Its here that Thomas seems most comfortable, flipping the background fizz of radio staples into winking pop nuggets. He dons the disguise well enough to slip into the grownups’ party but the sparkle in his eye and the flask in his pocket says he’s not planning on playing it cool for long.