Browsing Tag

Tom Petty

The prodigal sons of classic rock, Torn Rhythms, strike again in ‘Stay With Me’

Posted on 21 July 2023

Proving that there is still capacity for creativity in classic rock is the critically acclaimed Virgina-hailing five-piece Torn Rhythms, with their latest melodic masterpiece, Stay with Me.

There are shimmering clean guitar tones by the smorgasbord in the rhythmically enrapturing single, which plunges you into a panoramically immersive narrative right from the first verse. If anyone was giving out black belts for songwriting chops, Torn Rhythms would be adorned with them for their ability to make their vignettes come to life in visceral colour.

Listening to their instrumental melodies meander with precisive purpose is as easy as breathing; as for the vocals, they’re just like honey. If you’re as reverent to the traditional style of songwriting away from beats and loops and also happen to have a penchant for The Byrds, Tom Petty and Bob Dylan, you’ll want to stick with Stay with Me.

Stream Stay With Me on Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Denim Dan created a capsule of 70s folk-pop-rock nostalgia in their sixth studio album, This Way, That Way, The Other Way

Posted on 26 April 2023

NYC’s Denim Dan fortified the folk-pop-rock realm once again with their sixth studio album, This Way, That Way, The Other Way, which will ricochet you back to the 70s via an aural time capsule you have never experienced the like of before. Under the heart-on-sleeve influence of Tom Petty & The HeartBreakers, Lou Reed & Leonard Cohen, you will also be able to reminisce on the slightly zanier production styles of Zappa and the Legendary Pink Dots in this warm vignette of fond memories forged in an era of personal freedom and revelation.

There are few things as sonically sweet as coming-of-age tales after decades of retrospect. The kaleidoscopically honeyed soundscapes in This Way, That Way, The Other Way allows you to cruise right back to the 70s while allowing your perceptions to shift around the pearls of wanderlust wisdom.

“This Way, That Way, The Other Way is our sixth studio album. A non-fiction coming-of-age narration of loosely factual true events from my time in New Mexico in the mid 1970s. The title track and first four songs were written in Florence, Italy during the pandemic when I felt inspired to write about my experiences of four decades earlier. The next eight songs – also written about that period – including Let Your Love Fall Down On Me [too] were recorded in 2001 right after 911 in Boulder, Colorado. They were forgotten…but my son, Marcello, found them in an old computer.”

Stream This Way, That Way, The Other Way on Spotify now.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

The acrimony bells ring in Continental Lovers’ subversively sweet punk-rock ‘Wedding Song’

Posted on 23 February 2023

The UK’s trashiest punk-rock purveyors, Continental Lovers, dialled back on the scuzz in their latest subversively archetypal single, Wedding Song.

The change in direction has lost none of the impassioned volition that Continental Lovers have become renowned for since their relatively recent debut that has sent ricochets of raucous hype through the rock scene. Heartbreak never sounded so viscerally adoring. Nor has the recoil from love-hate whiplash resonated with such realism. Tom Petty would be proud.

The accordant ring of the guitars, contributed by Graham Jones (Haircut 100, Boys Wonder, Glen Matlock, is sweeter than any coil of silver or gold that can decorate your finger. Which is probably a good thing given the playfully machiavellian lyrical admission of theft of said symbolic token.

With producer Phil Booth (Sleaford Mods, Desperate Journalists, Hip Priests), elevating the single from the brashy punk-rock panache that Continental Lovers fans have been clamouring over since the fourpiece outfit started their ascent from the underground with euphonic organ tones, Wedding Song is the breakup song you never knew you needed.

Joe Maddox Said:

“Wedding Song is about quickly falling out of love with somebody and resenting their existence but still feeling that sense of loss and grief when a relationship ends. I guess we’ve all been there; it’s a cathartic process! I rarely write songs about real life, and this is no exception. I just wanted to write a bitter breakup song.”

Stream Wedding Song on Bandcamp & Spotify.

Follow Continental Lovers on Facebook & Instagram.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

What it means to be lost: Jamos Blood – Flesh and Back to Bone

Posted on 25 December 2022

Jamos Blood sludged up blues-rock in the standout single, Flesh and Back to Bone, from his debut EP, Blood Brothers, which delivers swampy riffs, train track rhythms and a sense of ennui that cries out to the disenfranchised by uncertain futures masses.

“Gonna walk my dog til he don’t walk no more” beautifully and sentimentally encompasses the notion that everything is fleeting in a cruel world which pulls away every anchor, eventually.

The EP was recorded with Blood’s late brother, Clayton, which puts even more context behind the titular disposition and the themes of love and loss that will wash with any Waits and Petty fans.

As someone who is no stranger to grief, it was all too easy to connect with Jamos Blood’s psyche in Flesh and Back to Bone. The sense of lost listlessness with splinters of optimism that can often feel naïve was captured with such finesse in the roots-driven rock hit it is easy to view Jamos Blood as one of the most important voices of our era.

Flesh and Back to Bone is available to stream on Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

New Earth Farmers share their reverent soul in their psych-tinged compassionate single, Everything Was Beautiful, Goodbye.

Posted on 26 November 2021
Into The Great Unknown by New Earth Farmers

After the pandemic inspired Nicole Storto and Paul Knowles to share pensive narratives with the world by forming New Earth Farmers, the duo delivered the resonance that the airwaves have been crying out for. Instead of musing on the most obvious facets of torment and malaise that gripped the world in 2020, New Earth Farmers delved deeper and explored ego-loss in their latest single, Everything Was Beautiful, Goodbye. Tom Petty and Bob Dylan fans won’t be disappointed with the vintage ease that the single carries through the progressions.

The track would bruise a few narcissistic egos if narcissists were emotionally aware enough to fathom their nefariousness. Considering that they will only ever look in the mirror with rose-tinted glasses, this sweetly psychedelically-tinged single is one for the enlightened.

Everything Was Beautiful, Goodbye, is now available with the rest of their album, Into The Great Unknown,  via Bandcamp.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Sailing off on a ‘Sea Of Change’ with the Star Prairie Project

Posted on 19 January 2021

The Star Prairie Project – named as a portmanteau of the village of Star Prairie in Minneapolis and the Alan Parsons Project – is the project of songwriter Nolen R. Chew Jr along with a collective of musicians and producers from around the US and Europe.

‘Sea Of Change’ is the first single from the project’s second album ‘Surreal’, released on the 18th December. The Star Prairie Project’s first album, released in July, has already ratcheted up over 1,000,000 streams on Spotify, with the single ‘Frantic Mind’ reaching #36 on the iTunes Top 100 Rock Chart.

Fresh, light, americana-meets-rock, ‘Sea Of Change’ is part-Lemonheads, part-Jayhawks, with a touch of Tom Petty guitar jangliness thrown in for good measure. It’s catchy, poppy without being disposable, with a nicely wah-driven guitar solo and a cute little middle-eight before the sing-along chorus carries you away once more.

Check out The Star Prairie Project’s latest release via Spotify.

Review by Alex Holmes

Desert Shade: “All For Nothing” – Classic Americana of the very best kind

Posted on 29 August 2020

Bringing the Classic Rock all the way from Annapolis, Maryland, comes Desert Shade. Describing themselves as ‘born out of necessity in the fall of 2019 to fulfil a headlining slot’, the band came from a scrabbled first headline set to a show that landed them on the Baltimore Soundstage just a few months later. Now, following a couple of early singles, they’re bringing their brand of Americana-influenced classic rock via this, from their forthcoming self-titled debut EP.

Awash of laid-back harmonica and tweedy Fender twang, meandering bass, and graced by a beautiful heavily wah-and-distorted lead-line from Nick M, ‘All For Nothing’ is a cigarette-lighters-at-the-ready burner in the style of ‘Someday Never Comes’ of ‘Forever Young’.

Quietly forceful and evocative without being schmalzy, ‘All For Nothing’ smoulders like the best of laid-back Neil Young, the Allman Brothers, Tom Petty, or the Grateful Dead.

You can check it out here.

Review by Alex Holmes

Dylan E. Crampton – Pretty Clothes: Psychedelically Sweet Indie Pop

Posted on 26 May 2020

Fans of the Beatles, the Zombies, and the Beach Boys, prepare to be enamoured by Dylan E. Crampton’s psychedelically sweet single Pretty Clothes which dropped in March 2020.

The melodies in the quintessentially affable single will win you over from the first verse, while Dylan E. Crampton’s harmonically soft vocals add even more magnetically captivating warmth to the soundscape.

The Irish Singer-Songwriter has an enviable skill when it comes to crafting efficacious guitar hooks and inventive melodies. Along with their tangible talent when it comes to writing solid, instantly accessible tracks, it’s easy to see big things in the pipeline for Dylan E. Crampton with his nostalgic yet authentic style.

You can check out Dylan E. Crampton’s latest single for yourselves by heading over to SoundCloud.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

LOVEBREAKERS RELEASE THEIR SINGLE ‘EYE ROLLER’

Posted on 26 April 2020

You can never say that the Britons can’t rock, it’s actually very much their cup of tea!

Lovebreakers set the example with their first single ‘Eye Roller’, an easy-listening alternative rock ballad that hints to a full-length album that apparently the Birmingham quartet is currently working on.

If you like Oasis’ and The Replacements’ open chords, ‘Eye Roller’ will satisfy you with its crunch strumming and melodic riffs overlaid on an upbeat pop tempo that makes your head cheerfully swing back and forth to the rhythm. Indie-ish (dare I say) vocals and honest and straightforward lyrics, you can’t help but sing along “guess what’s over, your eye-roller.”

Head over to Spotify and hit play on ‘Eye Roller.’

Review by Jim Esposito.

TANTRIC CYCLE releases Corona (It’s a long, long story)

Posted on 23 April 2020

TANTRIC CYCLE has dropped the latest release ‘Corona (It’s a long, long story)’. A song based on the way we’re all living at the moment and it’s safe to say it sums it up well.

A rather long piece of music, at a solid seven minutes, with lyrics that portray the truths of the world at hand. Besides the meaning of it, the instrumentation that goes through it is a lot more lively and catchy. Having the fast pace riffs on the guitar and the tap on the drums adding in the electric guitar shreds towards the end.

The vocals are filled with energy and have a rather quiet volume to them, with a soft texture. Halfway through the style changes a little and becomes more of a rock song, as the volume is heightened and the instrumentation becomes slightly heavier.

Listen to TANTRIC CYCLE’s single Corona (It’s a long, long story) by heading over to YouTube now.

Review by Karley Myall