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Tommy James and the Shondells are a curious band, at least to my generation. ‘Who?’ I hear you ask, scratching your plasticine head, still wet from the womb. If I tell you that ‘Crimson and Clover’ is their song, your mind would jump to one-hit wonder. If I went on to explain that they had a separate (and only) UK chart-topper with the raucous, ‘Hang On Sloopy’-adjacent ‘Mony Mony’, you might be no closer to the truth. And you’d be adrift in the chasm of not-an-effing-clue if I told you they wrote Tiffany’s ‘I Think We’re Alone Now’. That’s the kind of beast with which we’re dealing.

I’ll forever be envious of musicians in the sixties. The entire landscape of popular music was to be discovered. Each new riff was an island stumbled upon by chance, America mistaken for India, McCartney slipping proto-metal onto a double album with as much fuss as a doormat gliding down a spiral slide. Just whack a couple of amps atop one another and you’ll create an icon. It’s a blessing they left any music for the rest of us.

Gettin’ Together by Tommy James and the Shondells is an LP underappreciated. It missed the Summer of Love by only a few months, and despite the grins and yellow flowers of the cover, it’s far closer to the bubblegum than the 2C-B. Songs like ‘I Want To Be Around You’ and ‘There’s So Much Love All Around Me’, with their vocal harmonies and saccharine lyrics, are standard fare, albeit executed with enough panache to not become cloying or dated into apparent parody. The title track even nicks a Spencer Davis Group bassline, how much more sixties can you get?

‘Love’s Closin’ In On Me’ stomps its way into a Sonics-esque clap-a-thon, before ‘So Deep With You’ dares to delve even further into the twinkling gloss of the decade’s love-starred pop. But the song ends with a whimsical voice asking you to turn the record over (how quaint), and the next one starts with footsteps, and a sigh, and a languid announcement, and you start worrying that your stick of Hubba Bubba might have been laced with mescaline. You remember how, during ‘Some Happy Day’, each chorus flanged and dissolved into the next, as though your consciousness ebbed with the verses. Where are you?

Welcome to Side Two, the razor blades amongst the toffee apples. ‘Sometimes I’m Up (Sometimes I’m Down)’ shatters the longing and laity with half-spoken verses, relentless piano chords and, as the title suggest, a bit of doubt as to the protagonist’s contentment which was emphasised so repeatedly across Side One.

‘You Better Watch Out’ is one of the album’s greatest treats, a rock song that cruises with menace, its goblin-voiced threats – backed by someone clacking their mouth like Jesse Eisenberg half-asleep in an investment meeting – making me want to scurry into a casino and see how many chips I can fit into my mouth. 

We slip back into something placid, ‘Real Girl’, although even this gets into a gallop by the minute mark. However, ‘Real Girl’ wickedly fades into ‘Wish It Were You’, and you start to catch on that the ‘Real Girl’ may not be Tommy’s girl. The jaunty stroll that is ‘World, Down On Your Knees’ swings back into the lovestruck, but I’ve got my beady, diluted eye on you Mr James – yes, and on your Shondells. Who knows which girl he really loves? All we need to know is that, whoever it is, he can craft a sub-three-minute tune to win her over.

In fact, if Tommy James, backed by his brigandry of Shondells, came to me with a song like ‘Lost In Your Eyes’, I’d swiftly forget whichever slapper he was crooning over on ‘Wish It Were You’. It is by far the best song on the album, a sublime and almost-timeless piece that separates the LP’s wheat – ‘You Better Watch Out’s staccato vocals; ‘So Deep With You’s intro – from the chaff and bakes the lushest, most mesmerising bit of sixties rock I’ve stumbled on in a while.

The Avalanches (formerly known as Swinging Monkey Cocks, I believe, amongst other bizarre names) clearly agree with this assessment to a certain extent. They sampled the middle eight as a centrepiece to ‘Wozard of Iz’, although they must have heard more munchkin in the falsetto than goblin. In no way am I as prolific a cratedigger as the plunderphonous Avalanches, but ‘Lost In Your Eyes’ is the reason I decided upon this album for the inaugural Catching Up With…, and it both terrifies and exhilarates me. 

Have walkers stop walking? Travellers stopped travelling? Why do anything that has already been done before? Musicians in the sixties had the prospect of exploration, a whole canon of popular music yet to be recorded. Humble listeners we may be, but I don’t see why we can’t get a similar buzz rediscovering these gems in the modern day. That’s how I’ll get my kicks anyway: looking out at the vast spread before me, XTC instead of ecstasy, Tommy James in lieu of LSD.

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