Robbie Morön – Spare Parts

Calgary’s most prolific son, Robbie Morön, is back, well let’s face it, he never actually disappears for any noticeable amount of time. When he’s not teamed up with the The Moröns or The Golden Loadies, elbowing his way onto releases by fellow Canadians such as Trashed Ambulance, Let’s Go, Boltergeist and Burning Nickels, appearing on compilations, spinning tunes or promoting and organising punk shows, which he almost inevitably appears at, he’s churning out solo releases, and that’s what we have coming up. Robbie is set to reveal his latest solo venture, and his debut solo full length, Spare Parts, on the 20th April via your favourite digital outlet.

Robbie might be busy but it seems that whilst life is too short to actually take things easy, it’s also too short to take life seriously. Whilst not written for comic effect, as those kind of records tend to suck, this is more in the vein of The Vandals or maybe The Dickies, where it’s funny, but as a celebration of the ordinary and the ridiculous, rather than just being a joke that wears thin in under three minutes. Thus Robbie celebrates such subjects as bands getting lost on the way to venues, all you can eat chicken wings, hating shaking hands, the dominance of Google, not fitting in and pulling the stick out of your ass!

Of course Robbie has always been fond of an unlikely cover version, although there are a couple of the usual suspects on his Xmas EP, The First Noe. Most notable are his gleeful and rather wonderful manglings of Whitney Houston’s I Wanna Dance With Somebody and Enya’s Orinoco Flow with The Moröns. This time we go further back than his proven hunting ground of the 80’s, right back to the early 60’s with a revved up take on Dion’s doo wop classic, Runaround Sue.

Robbie Morön has delivered a dozen tracks that unsurprisingly are on the same wavelength as The Moröns, although importantly they are not identical as this has distinctly more DIY feel than The Moröns last full length, The Book Of Morön. There’s no lull as the prolific songwriter spits out albums, singles and EPs with a reassuring regularity and consistency, and Spare Parts in no exception, and I’m sure if you hang around for a few minutes he’ll announce something else is on the horizon!