A Foo Fighter and a Wildheart did battle over the last seven days, as Chris Shiflett and Ginger & The Sinners went head-to-head across the internet in our weekly Tracks Of The Week beat-em-up.
Only one could emerge victorious, and we're delighted to say that it was Ginger & Co. who did so, with their Lately, Always beating Shiflett's Long, Long Year in a rare battle between two songs that both feature commas in their titles. All Them Witches' excellent and excellently titled 6969 WXL THE CAGE came third, and there's absolutely no dishonour in that.
So here's Ginger & The Sinners' winning entry again, and then we'll crack on with another righteous rock'n'roll rumble.
And don't forget to vote, using the fancy voting mechanism at the foot of the page.
Thundermother - Black And Gold
The title track from these new-gen classic rockers’ latest album, Black And Gold is a rock solid banger – with deliciously deep bass, riffs you could just pile into a sandwich and singer Guernica’s best performance yet. Beefy yet bouncy, it kinda makes us think of Airbourne, Iron Maiden and AC/DC in a giddy, JD-swigging conga line, at a rock festival (I mean, isn’t that something we’d all want to see?). Uncomplicated but damn tasty.
GIFT - Gumball Garden
Don’t be fooled by the lo-fi opening chords, or the whimsical, Alice In Wonderland-y title – Gumball Garden has plenty of chew to get your teeth into. It’s the gauzy yet super-hooky brainchild of young Brooklyn psych-rock quintet GIFT, a band with shoegaze at their fingertips, early Pond and Tame Impala in their heads, and hallucinogens in their drinks…maybe. Kaleidoscopic, dreamy and it really rocks? Sign us up – sign us all up.
Monster Truck - Get My Things And Go
A simple but effective meat fest now, from Canada’s heavy-boogieing beardos Monster Truck – aided, in the video, by small bearded children (a bit less weird than it sounds). It’s groovy. It’s bluesy. It’s swampy in an infectiously thickset, trashy sort of way. It’s bacon in a hot roll with red sauce, brown sauce, hot sauce… any kind of sauce you want. In short, you probably want this in your life. Catch them on tour with Those Damn Crows across the UK in September and October.
Balto - Spanish Wine
There are a few rising bands waving the 70s rock’n’roll-meets-americana flag in California these days. Among this longhaired, paisley-shirted brigade are Balto, described as “card-carrying cultists of the Great American Song, the Great American Groove, and the Great American Highway”. Stirring beach sunset tones with harmonised shades of Tom Petty and the Eagles, it’s one for easy, breezy weekends and cross-country drives with no traffic. A soundtrack for the next heatwave? You could do a lot worse.
Alter Bridge - Silver Tongue
Myles K may’ve reunited with Slash this year, and Mark Tremonti might have gone all Sinatra on his latest solo album, but like bees to an open-faced jam sandwich they always come flying back to Alter Bridge – the mothership, the proverbial protein-shake from which this strapping hard rock specimen arrives. And that’s a good thing. Complete with dark, slightly Lovecraftian vibes in the accompanying animated video, Silver Tongue is another hint at heaviness to come on Pawns And Kings, the new album out October 14.
Thorbjørn Risager & The Black Tornado - Fire Inside
These Danish rockers pay homage to their favourite band, ZZ Top, on this rough-throated, bright-eyed bluesy strutter. Super-slick and pepped up with select brass blasts and wah-wah guitar chops, it’s an enriched take on Gibbons and co’s schtick, but a thoroughly enjoyable one. All aviators. Pure beard – with a lick of beard oil. As they explain: “I can’t tell how many times we've ended up in a very loud hotel room afterparty after a concert with ZZ Top's Tres Hombres on volume 11 and a bunch of cold beers!” Not a bad place to come from, right?
The Interrupters - Raised By Wolves
From In The Wild, the newly released fourth album by ska punk icons The Interrupters, Raised By Wolves finds singer Aimee Interrupter in buoyant form, fronting a song with a chorus that soars like bouncy castle in a tornado. Given the subject matter – it's about Aimee's experience with abuse – it's a song with an oddly life-affirming feel, but maybe there's a reason for that. "This song is me coming to terms with that," she says, "and forgiving those who I expected to be there for me, while also forgiving myself."
The Mars Volta - Vigil
If there ever was a band who'd return by doing the unexpected, it's The Mars Volta, and new single Vigil has certainly polarised opinion. With a strangely woozy instrumental backing and a pretty, soulful vocal from Cedric Bixler-Zavala, it's a long way from the aggressive, compressed peaks of their heyday, although they do go on to confuse matters by throwing in a skittish drum pattern over the ending. Confusing? We would hope so. Their new, self-titled album will be unleashed upon a quaking populace on September 16.
