Album Review and Interview: Smooth Rock Sounds of the 80s are Back, Courtesy of Young Gun Silver Fox

That unmistakable sound of West Coast smooth rock was all over the radio in the late 1970s and early 1980s with groups such as Hall&Oates, Player, Steely Dan, the Little River Band, Boz Scaggs, the Michael McDonald lead version of the Doobie Bros and many others.

The genre, which incorporated elements of smooth jazz and soul, is making a comeback, and a group helping to make the past current is Young Gun Silver Fox.  The band is made up of Andy Platts and Shawn Lee, who are not recording cover versions of 80s songs, but are creating new material that sounds like it was originally recorded from that era.

They duo has a new album out called ‘AM Waves,’ and the guys are so skilled at what they’re doing that if you didn’t know better, you would think you were listening to songs you somehow missed 35 years ago.

On the new episode of ‘Documenting Popular Music,’ journalist Robert Neil speaks with Platts and Lee from their studio in London about the new album and the retro sound that is starting to get a good deal of attention.