Car Music 23

Honeymoon Disease - The Transcendence, album review

Shocking Lilt

This Swedish rock group is firmly down to earth in its hard rock roots, but have transcended the nomenclature norm in naming themselves after the vernacular for cystitis. With the excellent female lead vocal of Jenna, her Scandanavian-English lilt - but the pure, precise tone too - reminds, perhaps inevitably, of Dutch band Shocking Blue and its vocalist Mariska Veres. Opener Higher is the most varied track on the album with its choric start, though it is quickly into dual guitar rock riffing and we know what we will be getting for the rest. But this is a fine generic track, as are the rest on this retro rock road heavily traveled of late. It is a welcome route.

Whiskey Music 4

Glenn Frey: 6th November, 1948 - 18th January, 2016

You were too fast to live, too young to die, bye-bye
You were too fast to live, too young to die, bye-bye
Bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye, bye 

The lyrics don't fit the life and death of Glenn Frey completely, but there is plenty of resonance all the same. Sharing songwriting duties with Jackson Browne, JD Souther and Don Henley on James Dean, this was one of many fine Eagles songs Frey helped to write. At 67 he was certainly too young to die, and as part of the rock excess immortalised by the Eagles as a band and in the documentary History of the Eagles, Frey will have been too fast for many things.

Indeed, in that documentary Frey rues the fact the Eagles were never a 'rock' band, but he and the others definitely lived the life of one. I have always been a stalwart fan, loving the west coast harmony for which they are famous, and there are plenty of rock elements to their songs over the decades. My favourite album of theirs is Desperado [reviewed on this blog here], their second but my first purchase. I listened to it all the time in my little cottage, blaring away through the night in the countryside. Memorable late nights, and now this one for an obvious mixture of reasons.

The Temperance Movement - White Bear, album review

Here to Stay

It would be easy, but lazy, to see this as more of the same, though of course it is, but it’s also more than this, and one of the number of developments from the band’s first album is the focus on Phil Campbell’s gritty vocal, not that this wasn’t a feature before.

Fourth track Modern Massacre exemplifies what I mean, especially as the opening 40 seconds are just vocal over bass drum thumps, the echo of Jim 'Dandy' Mangrum one of many reference points that can be made about the whole band and its sound, and often is, not least by me here when reviewing them live, but that vocal is also quite distinctive and showcased gloriously on this song. Interestingly, next Battle Lines begins by sustaining the focus, though the voice purposefully distanced by effects in the mix, and the song then shifts into its regular riff-driven rock, some potent bass being played too.

Opener and title track Three Bulleits [that’s bourbon, not ammunition] is a rousing stomper with plenty of slide guitar in evidence, not quite anthemic in the hey hey hey hey-a-hey hey hey come-on chorus but still singalong, eventually rising to guitar dueting. Second Get Yourself Free is a reasonably complex song structure in its variety, and there is the clear sound of Guess Who Burton Cummings in the vocal here – as ever, reference as positive reflection. Third A Pleasant Peace I Feel is the first ballad/slow song, sweet harmonies tight to Campbell’s mellower slow-song vocal, until the volume and pace rises, though the harmonising continues and the fuzzed guitar warms it all.

A nice piece of vocal yin yang is in sixth White Bear, Campbell starting as a softie and then erupting into Plant-esque pomp – gloriously on both – with more guitar slide into feedback for overall noise. After more rock-arousal of the highest order, the album closes on another slow number, I Hope I’m Not Losing My Mind, this having the most choric element of all in the band’s repeated rendition of the title line.

This is an excellent second coming confirming the band is here to stay.

And an additional note, having listened quite a bit more, this is an outstanding follow-up to their first, thoroughly recommended, and can be purchased here.

Hands Music 8

Skunk Anansie - Anarchytecture, album review

Two Views

One: there is little that is new on this release - from thumping rockpop to sweet ballads, both informed by the still sublime vocal of Skin. So, thank goodness.

Two: for those new to the band, you'd be better to start at their beginning with Paranoid & Sunburnt [1995] and Stoosh [1996], around the time I used to see them live and they could rock and swoon like no one else.

Additional: An Acoustic Skunk Anansie - Live in London [2013] is well worth a listen, showcasing Skin's wonderful singing. She is currently a judge on the Italian X-Factor - vallo a sapere.

Snowy Dunes - Snowy Dunes, album review

More of the Berg

Snowy Dunes from Stockholm do play a music that drifts psychedelically within and across tracks, as with opener Tranquil Mountain Lake and into second Dawn, the roaming riffs dusted with meandering, spacey vocals and guitar. Third Turn Around begins with a dominant riff immediately repeated with wah-wah, and then the vocal takes over with its emotive tensions, another song rolling on with gusts of energy to settle in psyched-out spaces. Fourth Watch Out For Snakes begins as a blues dirge - harmonica and distant, hollowed vocal – when the Sabbath-esque riff [a stated influence] kicks in. These are more from the depths of the great acidberg I mentioned in my previous posting, Snowy Dunes playing a particularly effective lysergic atmospherics.

Sign Music 10