The Black Capsule - The Black Capsule, album review

Easy Pill to Swallow

If you like guitar soloing this is a first ace up the sleeve for this release, extended ‘melodic’ solos, and by that I mean not raucous or industrial or virtuoso [this later in that ‘look-at-me’ zone of playing, as good as it may be]; or it can be a little funky rhythmically as the opening to Random Thoughts.

The group label themselves as ‘psychedelic rock’ and that’s fine, and it is, and from bands they cite as influence like The Velvet Underground I hear some of this, and also some of that extended playing from another, The Grateful Dead. A mention of Bob Dylan is, well, just a core influence on anyone musically inclined I would have thought, and this may inform some of the folkrock elements of their songs.

I do like how each song breaks into its instrumental jams – and as I am listening to Random Thoughts in writing this, it is Todd Nocera on keys [organ here] getting a showcase; drums pulsing a rhythm by Jon Kleinman; the bass playing of Dave Fischer walking a punchy up and down, and then dual guitaring from Hyram Stephens and Matt Hays develops gently and, again, melodically – reminding me just a little of Byzantium. This formula also reminds a smidgen of The Outlaws, though the band’s singing isn’t about harmonies.

This track and second Joanna and closer Desperate Dora are all at 10-11 minutes long and facilitate this. I don’t think the vocals are the band’s strength – and I don’t mean they’re naff, at all. There is an echo of Willy Vlautin at times [would seem incongruous if it was as pronounced as this] but that’s what I pick up – and I actually like the natural, unaffected honesty of this.

In an unambiguous celebration of another influence, the Jack Bruce/Pete Brown classic SWALBR gets a cover as the album’s sixth track, the dual guitaring signifying the strongest homage. At just under three minutes, it is faithful in this respect too. This is followed by The Netherlands, a slow drawl of a song that in this case reminds me of early NRBQ [and that’s not just to get another acronym in the paragraph]. 

Joanna is my favourite on this album: Joanna, she cut off all her hair for me; Susannah, she couldn’t see what I could see; Liana, she never laughed she talked too much; Corina, she said that I was out of touch is a semi-sprawling, rhyming narrative that continues, Christina, she drove a nice convertible, Sabrina she said I was incurable, Maria would only let old men pursue her… After all the cigarettes I’ll join the line of celibates and after this litany of love’s experiences the song breaks into some wonderful guitar and keyboard playing. No, not a Vlautin narrative, but it has its genuine charms. As does the whole album.

Into the Distance Music 91

Bonerama - Plays Zeppelin

Hornified

You either write a lot about just how good this is, or go for the shorthand of Horns Blow Led Zep or Big Brass Blasts Led Zep or Led Zeppelin Hornified Huge

or you get the Big Picture.

And just to say: hornified gets autocorrected to horrified which is inaccurate but also accurate in one brilliantly positive sense.

The band is made up of Mark Mullins on trombone, electric trombone and lead vocals; Craig Klein on trombone and lead vocals; Greg Hicks on trombone and vocals; Bert Cotton on guitar; Matt Perrine on sousaphone and electric bass, and Walt Lundy on drums and vocals.

And effects.

Brass riffs and effects.

Some fine rock vocal too.

All great. Misty Mountain Hop is a stonker. Funk of The Crunge!

Closing track When the Levee Breaks begins with a fuzzed/distorted primal announcement and then transmutes to a New Orleans blues procession, the horns rising and falling like a tide waiting to break over uncertain walls – when it does, it is a horn jamboree, a musical celebration to perhaps assuage a turbulent pain of the past.

More Signs Music

Little Steven & The Disciples of Soul - Summer of Sorcery, album review

The Only Re is Revelling

I’m currently in a complete re-watch of The Sopranos and, in fact, on the final series with later today perhaps the very last episode. I mention because I imagine Steven Van Zandt who plays Silvio Dante in the show would, on hearing/reading the occasional ‘retro’ criticism of this latest release, place his palm-up hands out in front of his body and shrug his shoulders, accentuated by a stylish jacket’s shoulder pads, saying ‘What ya gonna do?’

Exactly. At a time when retro/nu-soul is so popular and thriving – rightly so – why can’t this 60s rock-soul with huge production swathes not flourish too? Calling it re-anything is to miss the point if meant as a criticism.

These are horn-driven, pulse-thumped, chorus-echoed peons to the past and, yes, revitalised here by the energy of Van Zandt’s strong vocals and those horns in particular: listen to the riff-revelling and horn-propelling and chorus-embracing Gravity for a fine example. 

And strings! The closing title track has its own obvious referencing, and this is broader than any 60s labelling too, so the whole album's wall of celebratory sound is just that.

Into the Distance 90

Humble Pie - Joint Effort, album review

Funk Fire

This starts with such a funk bomb! And if you want to know what musical genius is, it is here: Steve Marriott funking James Brown’s Think with its comparable level of explosive funk.

No surprises this is the best of an otherwise ‘new’ album, recorded between 1974-75, but not released as the dissolved/reconvened band’s ninth album, until now. But in lighting such a fire that isn’t sustained, it’s a little dangerous. But what an initial burn!

Betty Wright’s Let Me Be Your Lovemaker is a Free-esque riffer that works well, even in its rather raw recording, followed next by a similar methodology with its Beatles’ cover Rain – a song as transformed as rain turned to sleet.

This Ol’ World and the blues gravel of Midnight of My Life are delights, the full impact of what was performed lost it seems to me in the production distance of what we eventually hear – his vocal forced across left and right as if only half-captured at that moment rather than a clichéd stereo-sound split. The gospel-esque organ and chorus add succour to the elemental emotion of Marriott’s singing.

Penultimate Charlene is an R&B chug of proper Small Faces lineage, and closing on Think 2 is a wise book-end of mainly instrumental embers wafted back to flame before it all died out.

Into the Distance Music 89