If rock music was made from automobiles, our Tracks Of The Week would be sporty two-seaters with chrome exhausts, overhead camshafts and go-faster stripes. Or maybe they’d be monster trucks, with huge motors and vast, knobbly tires. We’re not sure. Either way, we hope you enjoy them.
The Sheepdogs - Downtown
Not a cover of the Petula Clarke classic, but a rattling portion of slick retro rock with sweet harmony vocals, sweet harmony guitars, and a video in which health and safety in the workplace takes a back seat and vandalism runs amok.
Def Leppard
Unmistakably Def Leppard, with a slick production, some slippery fretwork, soaring vocals, a riff that crunches in a most satisfactory manner, and bits that sound like Queen at their most spectacular. It’s classic Leppard, and it’s modern Leppard, and it’s taken from the new album, which is available as a Classic Rock fanpack.
The Midnight Barbers - Oh Maddie
They might sound like Captain Beefheart conjuring up voodoo rhythms from some secluded Mississippi backwater, but the Midnight Barbers are actually from Chelmsford. Oh Maddie “skits along with loops that sound almost like musical tourettes,” they say, and we’re not going to argue.
Rocket From The Tombs - Coopy (Schrodinger’s Refrigerator)
Pere Ubu’s frontman returns under his alter ego Crocus Behemoth with a new track from Rocket From The Tombs, the band who virtually invented the whole seventies CBGB scene despite being from Cleveland rather than New York. Deliriously, deliciously weird.
Moonspell - Domina
This track by dark metallers Moonspell is taken from their well-received album Extinct, a disc they claim features lessons taught by “Portuguese gentlemen wolves”. This sounds like a very good thing indeed, and Domina isn’t bad either, with soaring guitars and an epic chorus and a key change at 3’35” that lifts the song into the stratosphere.
Old Man’s Will - Troubled Man
Like most Swedes of a rocking inclination, Old Man’s Will are masters of the form, and Troubled Man rips along like all the best 70s bands all at once, with bits of Zeppelin and bits of Purple and bits of Free and bits that are distinctly their own. If you like Rival Sons, you’ll probably like this. In other news, Old Man’s Will is a strange name for a band. Perhaps it’s some kind of penis joke.
Deepshade - The Line
Released today, The Line is borne aloft by a riff that sounds a bit like Queens Of The Stone Age, but possesses a lightness of touch that tends to be missing from a lot of the bands whose songs are borne aloft by riffs that sound a bit like Queens Of The Stone Age. Nice.
VLY - Circles
Rising like a phoenix from the ashes of Crippled Black Phoenix, with Karl Demata’s wondrous Gilmour-like guitar to the fore. The band describes themselves as “a multifaceted beast where suggestions from progressive rock, classic rock and folk meet with early-Floydian psychedelia”, and there’s not much we like more than a multifaceted beast, so they’re in.
