Insert Craig McLachlan reference here…
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[3.20]
Tom Ewing: In the current furore over the “death of rock” it’s important to note that Paul Gambaccini didn’t actually say rock was dead. What he said is that the “rock era” is over, in the same way as the “Jazz era” ended. Assuming this jazz era ended around the same time the rock era began, what jazz did AFTER its death includes Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, electric Miles, fusion, not to mention a lot of things which DON’T even end up on 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die lists. Clearly rock, with the pressure off, is now due a period of comparable fertility and I am certain this Mona track I am about to listen to will help usher it – oh. Oh dear.
[1]
Doug Robertson: Every year, filling up the slow news month of January, there are a million articles about how “rock is dead” and how some other genre is killing off guitar music. Once, just once, I wish they were actually right.
[1]
Jer Fairall: Blurry, emotive guitar rock easily located along the early-U2/Buffalo Tom/Gaslight Anthem axis and delivered with passion and urgency…and some truly godawful lyrics. Bono has had a long history of howlers himself, I realize, but “See your blood dance / Come baby come baby romance / Don’t be scared just take a chance”? That oughta get you sent straight back to the minors.
[5]
Iain Mew: I heard this on the radio a while back, accompanied by the kind of grimly familiar talk which said that their place in the Sound of 2011 list was a formality, and I said “Great, when it comes to new music what we really need is a British Kings of Leon”. But it turns out that they’re from Tennessee.
[3]
Jonathan Bradley: The appetite the British public has for emotive vocals, post punk guitar, and indecipherable singing is so great the BBC has apparently taken to importing cut rate product from across the water. “The majority of this Nashville-based four-piece were raised in the church and learned their craft playing to the congregation” spouts the Beeb, disregarding the old adage that those who ignore the mistakes Kings of Leon made in the past are doomed to repeat them.
[4]
Alex Macpherson: Garage rock transplanted to a provincial pub, leeched of all point or individuality and destined to be played in front of audiences of four people forever (I assume their presence here is an accident, possibly due to someone misspelling something somewhere).
[2]
Anthony Easton: Stripped and basic, the lead has a great voice, nothing new, but solid for what it is.
[6]
Martin Skidmore: You wouldn’t object to them in a pub rock context, as they are competent enough and play with hints of energy, but there is nothing of any conceivable interest here that I can spot.
[2]
Frank Kogan: Was hoping for a Bo Diddley beat; instead we have a potentially punky yarl that breaks into melody and runs into the problem that yarling people who are not Joe Strummer have of not being able to wrap their voice evocatively around a tune.
[4]
Alfred Soto: A lead singer with a severe case of Bono-itis helms a band with a mild case of the Strokes. The hook might persuade you to replay it.
[4]