Gary Steel
“THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY” – A SHORT SERIES OF 2014 ALBUM REVIEWS THAT NEVER SAW THE LIGHT OF DAY, FOR SOME REASON.
AUSSIE ROCKERS KINGSWOOD won’t win any awards for alt-rock cool, but their swaggering cock-rock has such a perpetual stiffy that they’re impossible to ignore.
It’s difficult not to hear any number of 1970s hard rockers in the group’s sound, with Zep-style riffing and a penchant for dramatic, mid-song tectonic shifts that is seldom heard quite like this, even amongst other contemporary ‘70s obsessives like The Datsuns or Queens Of The Stone Age.
“I Can Feel That You Don’t Love Me”, for instance, keeps the fundamental bass and drums sizzling along like a giant automata, but Fergus Linacre’s soulful, powerful vocal takes it somewhere other than the expected macho domain. The same is true of “Micro Wars”, where Linacre howls passionately in the manner of a Jeff Buckley, but the backing fails to do the obvious thing and devolve into soul mulch.
It’s a very physical, hard-hitting capture of the instruments, kudos for which must go to the top Nashville studio they recorded it in, along with its top producer (Vance Powell, of Jack White fame) and mastering by Rick Rubin’s favoured engineer, Richard Dodd. GARY STEEL
Sound = 4/5
Music = 3.5/5
