Kicking off with a fuzzy, scratchy version of the strident, robust rocking riff that underpins The Need For Money is a nice touch, the track that follows oddly sounds like Status Quo in its verses and Super Furry Animals in its choruses. Lyrically it’s a bit drab (“We wanna spend our money/On something new.”) and it runs for a rather numbing five and a half minutes, it segues into an ambient breakdown that doesn’t really lend any excitement to inevitable return to chunky riffage and Dave Lawry’s bass noodling.
This debut release from the Leeds-based trio continues with the Steppenwolf-like Bended Knee, it’s a trad-sounding rocker but in a somewhat pleasingly retro fashion. Meanwhile Transparent has a moodier vibe, Reece Wilde’s guitar wandering around with predatory attitude in the background of Jonathan Blackmore’s heavy drumming. Lawry’s vocal, as it has done across the previous two tracks, doesn’t particularly find its own style, instead delivering an impersonation of someone else, here it’s Led Zeppelin via Peter Gabriel, which isn’t a bad thing per se. Without wishing to sound dismissive of what the band do they do have a certain pub-rock sound, kind of like the Stereophonics in the early days, but with more ambitious (if less sing-a-long-able) song arrangments.
Unfortunately the good will doesn’t quite extent to the limp See Me I’m Gone, Lawry’s bass playing is buoyant and fun, but the rest just feels a little rock-by-numbers. It’s dying minute gives Wilde a chance to let fly with a guitar solo, but it’s not exactly an energising and electrifying moment, and the track (and record) comes to an abrupt and somewhat underwhelming close.
Sturdy rock with cap doffed to the best of the 70s, this trio make fine if predictable tunes, perhaps in these early days they’re mining the past whilst finding their sound, or, they may be content to skate dangerously close to being a covers band, albeit a pretty decent one.
[Rating:3]
