Carbon County – When I Fly
Rock stars are supposed to play up to the need for mystery and build their own myth. Guitarists like Jimmy Page or Bernard Butler were compared to Lord Byron. They were, supposedly, mad, bad, and dangerous to know. They were into magic, weird sex fetishes, and could pick off great riffs straight out from the sky.
Try as bands to make music as mysterious as possible, most of us who grew up asking our parents for an electric guitar really had one or two ambitions. The first was to learn to play Black Sabbath riffs. The second, perhaps, was to get some of these tunes on the radio, earn a few bob and pretend to be rock stars.
Carbon County’s When I Fly is an unashamed mixture of both those things. There’s a certain sound going around and still landing guitar bands a spot on the radio. It’s blues-pop-rap and it deserves to be perverted. Just like Carbon County does here. It’s over the top hard-rock taken into a brave, new direction.
Tongues Of Fire – Room
Ideally, every song by a rock band should sound like the last tune of the night before a moment of reckless passion makes them destroy all their instruments and leave the stage without saying goodbye. Not all groups can produce such anarchic beauty. If not, we, the audience, love to be tricked.
See, the thing is that, unless you’re John Lennon or Frank Zappa presenting a two-hour work where every note was carefully and purposely placed, the beginning and middle of the concert are merely excuses to get people to come down, spend a few quid, and dance in front of the stage for a couple of hours.
Tongues Of Fire’s Room sounds now just like the last song of the night, but the last song they might play in a movie dedicated to the group’s existence. It’s a kind of dance-rock, sure, but it is played as if being covered by Motorhead. The vocals are shouted, the bass is booming, and the strobe lights attempt to create seizures out on the dance floor.
