Strutter – Ain’t no Time
Fans of specific music genres are like low-grade members of illegal gangs. Sure, when asked, most people will profess that they share a love for all kinds of styles of music. This is usually false. It is, especially, untrue when you are young. Music more than, perhaps, anything else in the modern world offers you all of the tools you need to adhere to a certain lifestyle and deny others.
It starts with posters on your wall and etchings in your notebook of people who resemble some kind of mythic heroes. It next moves towards the clothing, the manner of talk and, if lucky or gifted, into the type of music you play yourself.
The majority of the people who end up creating strange hybrids of modern music began by falling head over heels for classic rock and the comic book characters that populated this world. I know. I did too. Maybe because of its age, or its legacy, classic rock gets a bad rap these days.
Overall though. It’s the groove and swagger of this particular segment of rock music that sits at the centre of almost anything else that is even mildly sonically challenging. A group that has been digging into the grooves, the moves and the style of classic rock is Strutter.
Yes, the band name may make you think that this is some kind of KISS tribute act, but it’s far from the truth. On Ain’t no Time, the Irish quartet find a way to extract the very best of classic rock’s over the top potential to soundtrack a barroom brawl. Here’s a band that lets you know that it’s OK to keep the Thin Lizzy and Whitesnake posters still hanging on the basement walls.
Fake Hole – RED SONG
You have to feel sorry for professions that have disappeared with time. You’ll hear many people decrying the evils of technology, stealing people’s jobs and livelihoods. I imagine that the old town crier must have been the rockstar of his time.
It wasn’t an easy profession either, I suppose, nor one that anyone could take up. Those that got the gig had to train themselves to have the lung capacity of an Olympic swimmer, and the vocal cords of a heavy metal screamer.
Fortunately, those who have developed a melancholy for this position may yet still apply as a garage rock singer. Howlers, screamers, and groaners are all welcome. Fake Hole’s minimalist, lo-fi garage-rock pummeling of RED SONG goes on to prove this. There will always be refuge for those that want to yell their problems either on top of the mountain or in front of a rock band.
