December 28-January 4, 2001
by Jay Ruttenberg
...continued
Along with their family ties, this studio rests at the core of the
Nourallahs' gingerly home-cooked album. The songs here retain an unshackled
touch, as well as the fuzzy feeling of two brothers harmonizing as one. The
Nourallahs split instrumental, songwriting and vocal duties; it's tough to
tell their choirboy voices apart, though the Faris-penned numbers tend to
lean toward old-school British pop while Salim's suggest the type of desert
jazz played by bands such as Giant Sand and Pinetop Seven.
But the most enticing bits on the record are the ones conjuring a nostalgia that will be familiar to fans of The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. Listening to the Nourallahs salute "Christmastime" and "Public School" (both part of an informal song suite) is darling—sometimes a little too darling.
Considering the fact that the Kink siblings prospered from
brotherly spite—and that Salim and Faris are reportedly not getting along at
the moment—if these feuding frères can learn to capture their enmity in song,
there's no telling how high they'll fly.
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